Stranger in the Room: A Novel (26 page)

“I just got a call from Miki’s phone. The one she thought she lost. He’s there, Mom, and he’s close. I could hear your voice.”

  
23

“M
iki, sweetheart,” I heard my mother saying, so nonchalantly she might have been about to discuss the weather, “I need you to help me with something inside for a minute. I’m so sorry to interrupt, honey. Will you excuse us?”

“Perfect, Mom. You’re doing great.”

“I have Miki, and I’m trying to find your father,” my mother said in my ear.
“Howard.”
I could hear the rising tension in her voice. “There you are, Howard! Would you help us bring out some more trays, please? Now.”

“Well done, Mom. I’m calling Rauser. Stay inside until you hear from him.”

“But Keye, the party—”

“Lock yourselves in,” I snapped. “Tell Dad to get his gun and check the house. I love you. The cops will be there soon.”

I called Rauser. I told him about Miki’s lost phone calling my number. He disconnected without saying good-bye. I didn’t know what he’d do, but I knew he’d do it fast. The Decatur cops could be there in minutes. I fired off a text to Neil.
We have to leave. Emergency
.

Neil blew through our connecting door fifteen minutes later as I was making a last sweep of the room for personal items. He was carrying the suitcase I’d packed for him, a shaving kit, and a belt. We
raced through the lobby and to the car. I told Neil about the phone call. I was on edge, waiting for my phone to ring again, waiting to hear they’d found him, this stranger who wanted to harm Miki in ways I wasn’t sure I understood, this killer who might be at this very moment milling around with my parents.

Neil put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He smelled like beer and cigarettes. “You know, it’s out of our hands now,” he said. “Rauser’s there by now. The Decatur cops were probably there in five minutes. And I’d like to get there in one piece too.”

I glanced at the speedometer. “Sorry.”

I heard Rauser’s ringtone. “Everyone’s safe,” he reported. “We found Miki’s phone on one of the tables outside, bagged it, locked the place down.”

I sucked in air. “He wanted us to know he was there. Jesus, he was so close to Mother I could hear her voice.”

“Hopefully she remembers seeing somebody she didn’t know. Look, we got Miki out of there, and we did it in the wide open. If he was anywhere close, he knows she’s not at your parents’ house anymore. Bevins and Angotti drove around for a while, but they never picked up a tail. She’s at my place for now. Wherever we end up putting her, she’ll have a detail twenty-four-seven.”

“Thanks for that. Where are my parents?”

“Emily and Howard are in the house with a group of their friends. Balaki’s taking statements. Someone had to have noticed him. Unless he’s one of them, somebody that grew up in the hood with you guys. Maybe had a thing for Miki.”

It was worth thinking about. I told him I would.

“Street,” Rauser’s voice sharpened, “he knows who you are. He picked your number to call. Christ, there’s a lot of people here. We broke them up into four groups of twenty. Williams, Thomas, and one of Decatur’s plainclothes are helping get statements outside. That’s gonna take awhile. Decatur City is on the street too. By the way, the caterers checked out clean. Everyone that delivered food to Kelly’s party came and went together. Pretty clean bunch.”

“Shit.” I sighed. “Right now he’s just toying with Miki. Again, he had an opportunity to harm her and he didn’t.”

“Maybe he wants it to be just right,” Rauser suggested.

“Maybe. We need to understand it, Rauser, before she gets hurt.”

“We won’t let her get hurt.”

“Can you get me access to the evidence? All of it, I mean. The crime scene analysis, the victimologies, whatever your detectives have pulled into the files so far, interviews, anything the labs have with regard to the Delgado and Kelly cases.”

“I could if you were, say, a psychological consultant.”

“I want in.”

“I thought you’d never ask, Dr. Street.”

A
couple of hours later, Rauser parked on the street. I pulled in behind him. There was a Crown Victoria in his driveway, a much later model than the one Rauser drove. And much cleaner. It shone under the outside flood. He used his phone to call inside from the sidewalk as we walked toward his always-in-some-stage-of-renovation two-bedroom in the Virginia Highlands section of Atlanta. He’d knocked down walls and put in windows and built a deck off the master bedroom and screened in half of it. He was planning to convert the unfinished attic to a master loft overlooking the living room when he had time. Rauser would have been a carpenter, he’d once told me, if he hadn’t gone into law enforcement. He loved working with his hands. He was a project guy. I liked that about him. Watching him banging nails in a wife beater with a tool belt hanging off his waist wasn’t bad either.

Detective Angotti opened the door for us, his shirt bunched under a double shoulder holster, his S&W forty tucked up near his rib cage, right side. Angotti was a lefty. The snap was open.

I saw playing cards on Rauser’s coffee table. The TV was on, but the volume was low. Angotti was doing things to keep them both busy—games, TV—while making sure he could hear outside noises.

Miki came from the kitchen, saw me, and ran into my arms. I hugged her tight. We went to Rauser’s couch. She gripped my hand. Rauser sent Angotti on his way, then checked the doors and windows, made coffee while Miki and I talked, put mugs and cream and sugar on the antique coffee table, then took a chair facing us.

Miki poured cream into a mug. I took a cup black. “You need anything?” Rauser asked. “Want some food or something?”

Miki shook her head. “Aunt Emily stuffed everyone within reach all night. Oh God, she must hate me. She worked so hard to make everything perfect.”

“She’s fine,” Rauser said. “She was serving drinks and snacks and shit while we were getting statements.”

“That’s Mom,” I said. “She really knows how to throw an interrogation.”

“Anybody at the party look suspicious to you?” he asked Miki. “Someone who didn’t fit in? Somebody alone, not interacting? Someone you didn’t recognize. Someone you recognized but couldn’t place.”

“That pretty much describes the whole experience. I mean, it’s a different neighborhood now. I only go back for holidays. I didn’t know most people there. Or they looked vaguely familiar. Jesus, we’ve all gotten so fucking old!” my thirty-four-year-old cousin told Rauser.

“How about you just tell us everything you remember from the first folks arriving,” Rauser suggested.

Miki took us through the party. She was holding together just fine. No frazzles. Miki had fought her way through life. For the first time, I was beginning to see the survivor in her, the one who had to have emerged these last couple of years, the one who had kept her out of the hospital. She was completely sober as I looked into her eyes, clear and turquoise, even though I knew Rauser’s bottle of bourbon was on the kitchen counter and that booze had been flowing freely at the party. For these get-togethers, Mother fills punch bowls full of white sangria with orange and lime slices that have absorbed liquor for days.

“Well, I guess the good news is it’s not Cash.” Miki sighed. “Cash can’t go anywhere without being recognized. And I would have spotted him. I’d know that walk and that voice anywhere.”

“Two of my guys paid him a visit today,” Rauser told us. “He cooperated fully. He had a house full of celebs for most of last weekend. The twenty-four hours after Kelly was killed, he was home. Lot of witnesses to that.” Rauser didn’t mention that I’d been to visit Cash Tilison. I was glad. I wasn’t ready for that discussion. “He had a big bash planned on the lake.”

“I was with him and his friends last Fourth of July.” Miki smiled at some private memory, looked down into her cup. “I appreciate you offering me protection. But I can’t stay locked up here. Aunt Emily’s audition is in the morning at the TV station. I promised I’d be there.”

“I’m sure Emily would understand,” Rauser said.

“I’m keeping my commitment to Aunt Emily.” Miki said it like she wanted a pat on the back. “And after that, I’m flying out. I have an assignment.”

“I can’t hold you here,” Rauser told her. “But we can’t protect you once you get on a plane. We’ll move you to a nice hotel, if that’s what you want. You don’t have to stay here. I have a uniform coming at seven in the morning. I’d like you to stay here with us tonight.”

We were quiet for a minute. Then Miki nodded and said, “There’s severe weather cutting through Texas. They’re predicting a super-outbreak. Tornadoes. I’m meeting a storm chaser in Birmingham, then we’re driving to meet the storms. I fucking cannot wait to get out of here. Besides, this asshole never follows me.”

“She has a point, Rauser. I don’t think he has the resources to follow her. You can’t fly around the world unless it’s your job or you’re loaded. Remember, that volunteer noticed his clothes aren’t expensive. Think your unsub has trouble holding a job. Plus, he’s probably not the most charming guy in the world, probably has a lot of trouble getting along with coworkers, thinks he’s always right, argumentative, egocentric, and we know he’s violent. We’re probably looking at a borderline personality. I bet there’s a lot of anger and panic when she’s away. The loss of control would set him off.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about me as if I weren’t here,” Miki said. “But I had to change my number last year. Hang-ups, text messages.
You can’t hide. You can’t run
. Shit like that. I thought it was Cash. Then, one day when both Cash and I were in L.A., we met for lunch. I was planning to tell him I was going to get a restraining order if he didn’t stop harassing me. One of those messages came in while we were together. Went on and on about me disappearing.”

Rauser sat forward. “Why is it I never heard anything about text messages or phone calls?”

“APD hasn’t exactly taken me seriously, Aaron,” Miki shot back, with a little flare of anger. “I told the officers about the calls when I
got back in town and started hearing noises. The calls stopped when I changed my number. But the noises didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Rauser said.

“Nothing personal, but I’m safer out of town.”

“I don’t like it,” Rauser said.

“He took your phone, so he has the new number,” I said. “Maybe he’ll try to communicate. We’ll get you a replacement with a new number and APD will keep the old one.”

“I never responded to any of the messages,” Miki said.

“You did the right thing,” I told her. “It would just fan the flame. Rauser, you have access to the hospital records yet?”

“Records of subpoenas were easy enough. But we’re dealing with four different institutions and it’s a holiday weekend,” Rauser groused.

Miki got up and went to the kitchen, called out to Rauser, “You mind if I make a drink?”

“Only if you bring me one. Bourbon. Neat.”

She returned with two glasses. “Thanks for letting me stay,” she told Rauser, and touched her glass to his. She sat down and knocked back the bourbon. Three fingers in one long drink. We’d all had a hell of a day. If I was drinking I’d have done the same thing.

I heard my name. Rauser hiked up the volume on the television. A chopper hovered over the dirt lane I walked only hours ago, its spotlight illuminating the flat earth below.

A Fox Five journalist reported over the footage:
“Private detective Keye Street made the first grisly discoveries behind the home where crematory operator Joe Ray Kirkpatrick lives with his mother. Street was hired to investigate the operation by Atlanta attorney Larry Quinn.”

Rauser shook his head. “Quinn went straight to the media. He’s such a whore.”

I leaned forward and switched the ringer on my phone to silent. Miki glanced at me, then back at the television. The pond was in some stage of being drained, the reporter said. The GBI had erected barriers to protect their scene, but their generators had it lit up like a football field. Super-zoom lenses and enterprising reporters doing fly-bys gave us a close look at the scene. Investigators carried big sheets out of the muck. They’d covered them to defeat surveilliance,
but I knew what they were hauling out of that lake. I wondered how hard it would be to identify the dead after being immersed in water. I thought about what must be happening in the minds of thousands watching this report. A blizzard of phone calls would follow broadcasts like this one. They’d want to know if their funeral provider used Northeast Georgia Crematorium. They’d want to know if a piece of someone they’d loved was being dredged out of that nasty pond.

“What the hell is wrong with people?” Rauser fumed.

“Investigator Street famously made headlines during the Wishbone serial murders last year.…”

“Uh-oh,” I said and groaned, dreading whatever was coming next. My relationship with Atlanta’s press corps had not always been cordial.

“That’s where you were all day, Keye? Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me?” Miki demanded.

“When did I have time? It’s been high drama all night.”

Miki nodded. “Well, even when it’s quiet you play it pretty close, Keye. No one ever knows what’s up with you unless you totally blow. Isn’t that right, Aaron?”