The Fear Collector Page 18

  Sienna nodded. “Yeah. She said she was going to just walk away and disappear. She was going to start over somewhere. New name. New everything. She said she’d never be found because if she ever did her bitch of a mom would be right there telling her what to do.”

  The dog, whose name they learned was Toby, started to scratch and Grace was sure that she was going to end up with fleabites on her ankles. Bugs of all kinds loved her blood. She was a veritable smorgasbord for mosquitos, too.

  “When did she say this to you?” Paul asked

  “When didn’t she? She was always complaining about her mother. She thought her stepdad was nice, but stupid to be stuck with that witch of a wife.”

  “Did she share this with anyone else?”

  “How would I know? I told you that we weren’t that close.”

  Grace made a few notes, asked a few follow-up questions, and the interview was over.

  When they got out to the car, she stopped before getting inside.

  “She’s such a liar,” she said. “If she’s not, then I can’t read people at all. Diana Rose is no bitch mommie dearest. She just isn’t.”

  Paul got inside and turned the key.

  “Get in, let’s go.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah. I am. But honestly, you know that no one has a clue about what goes on behind closed doors. Remember Candee?”

  Grace slid into the seat. How could she forget?

  * * *

  Candee Getz was a seven-year-old girl who had been held captive by her father and stepmother for four years in a back bedroom of her Browns Point home. Patty Getz simply hated any reminder of the first Mrs. Getz, a woman who had died in a traffic accident and had never even been a rival of Mrs. Getz number two. When she and Don Getz married, she sold everything that was even remotely connected to Geneva Getz. Literally everything. Every. Little. Thing. Geneva’s family would have loved to have had the old silver, the china, the family antiques, but Patty couldn’t be bothered with returning any of the treasures. She wanted it all gone and she wanted it done fast. She ran an advertisement on Craigslist and let complete strangers pick the bones of her husband’s first wife’s memory. All gone but Candee, of course.

  And yet, the small blond toddler simply disappeared. As far as the neighbors knew, Candee had gone off to live with relatives in Idaho. The Idaho family had given up on trying to stay connected to their sister’s little girl.

  Don Getz had been adamant that it was better for Candee to start over.

  “She’s been through enough. She needs to be part of a new family.”

  The family, heartbroken beyond words, didn’t know what else to do. Don had always been a decent guy. If he’d wanted to start over, then they’d let him.

  All of that changed when one sunny July afternoon a young man hired to clean the pool next door heard cries coming from the Getz house. At first it sounded like a wounded animal.

  A coyote? Maybe?

  Jorge Martinez knocked on the door, but no answer. He noticed a stack of Tacoma News Tribune newspapers heaped up on the steps, indicating that whoever lived there hadn’t been home. The cries were so loud that he let himself in the side gate and wound his way around the house. At the back of the house was a bedroom with its windows covered with aluminum foil from the outside.

  The sound was unrelenting.

  “Hello?” he said.

  The noise stopped. It was sudden. Just off.

  “Hello?”

  Jorge heard the sound of something moving beyond the aluminum-covered window. He rapped on the glass, a dull thud rather than the clear sound of a fist against glass.

  Then he heard a sound that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise.

  “Help,” the voice cried.

  It was no coyote, but the sound of a very scared child.

  It didn’t take Jorge much time at all to do the right thing.

  “Move back,” he said. “Move away from the window. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  Jorge pulled the concrete top off a bird bath and pushed it hard into the window.

  From the opening he could see her. She was small. Pale. Frightened. Candee had been found.

  The neighbors did what they always did. They told the police, the reporters, even Oprah Winfrey, that they’d had no idea she was held captive. No idea that the ideal family unit next door was nothing as it had seemed.

  Grace ran the story through her mind. She knew that people like Don and Patty Getz existed. They had jobs. They put up Christmas lights. They attended the annual block watch meeting. And yet inside their beautiful home, with its stunning gardens and views of Commencement Bay, was a dark secret. No one could have seen it coming. No one would have ever guessed in a million years.

  Grace looked over at Paul as he started to drive. They’d both worked the Candee Getz case. It was one of those cases that stayed with everyone a long, long time. Probably forever. That wasn’t true of most cases. Most came and went. A good detective knew that when his work was done, it was done. To dwell on something terrible, as most such cases were, was to invite nightmares and regret.

  “I heard from Geneva’s sister. Candee’s doing great,” she said.

  “Great or as great as could be expected?”

  Grace looked out the window. “No, great. Really. She’s going to be okay.”

  “Let’s go see if Palmer Morton’s kid is home,” Paul said.

  “Sounds good.”

  Emma Rose woke with a jolt. The clicking sound and the sense that someone was watching her had become familiar. She looked up, then over at the door. The hatch opened and a sandwich, American cheese on white bread with the crust trimmed, was presented on a paper plate. Alongside it was a can of cola. Emma took the items from the tray and watched it pull away, disappearing on the other side of the door. The hatch snapped shut. She turned away and started for the mattress when the hatch opened again.

  That was unusual. The creeper normally waited about an hour or longer before the tray was submitted for the paper plate and the cola can.

  Emma went back to the door and looked down at the tray. It was empty except for a single Hershey’s Kiss candy, its shiny silver foil wrapping caught the light from the reading lamp by the mattress. There was a long list of things that she missed by then—her mother, her friends, her sense of feeling safe. Free. On the list, somewhere past everything else, was chocolate.

  Had she said something about it to the creeper? She wasn’t sure. In those first days of captivity, Emma had sputtered out a flurry of things amid her protestations that she didn’t deserve this. She’d said over and over that she would do whatever he wanted if he only let her go. She’d screamed into her thin pillow how much she wanted to go home and how she never wanted to see an American cheese sandwich again. She might have mentioned she wanted some coffee or candy or something along those lines.

  Had he given her the Kiss for any reason other than to be kind? Had he given it to her so that she would do something for him? To him?

  In that moment, she didn’t care. She unwrapped the foil and put the candy into her mouth. The first bite was silky, creamy, so wonderfully sweet. Then it tasted slightly chalky. She disregarded the texture of the candy. She wanted something that gave her a little bit of pleasure. Something that tasted good.

  As she walked toward the mattress she felt a strange sensation. Her knees began to weaken.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Morton mansion sat defiantly on the edge of the bluff overlooking Tacoma’s sparkling, but decidedly working-class, Commencement Bay. It was, arguably, the most magnificent setting for any home in the City of Destiny, as Tacoma boosters had nicknamed Seattle’s stepsister to the south. It wasn’t just a large home, but a true mansion with seventeen rooms, including a ballroom. The house had come with a bit of history, too. It had been the site of a famous kidnapping of a doctor’s son in the 1930s—a crime that had never been solved. The home
was painted an eggshell white with black shutters and was set off by a circular drive that wound around a fountain that was a replica of some Italianate antiquity that the original owners had sculpted on the spot. Before Palmer Morton bought the place, the home had been a regular on the historic homes tour. The incontrovertible diamond of the tour, patrons of the annual event agreed.

  Grace suppressed the urge to roll her eyes when a servant dressed in a uniform of black and white answered the heavy, ten-foot door. Who but a jerk like Palmer Morton would make the help look like they came with the historic home?

  “May I help you?” asked the dour man with a shiny pate and razor-thin moustache.

  “Yes, I guess you could,” Grace said. “We’re looking for Alex Morton. Is he home?”

  The servant studied the detectives, first Grace, then Paul. “I’m Richard Mathias, the butler. What is your business with Alex?”

  Grace spoke up. “We’re investigating the disappearance of a friend of his.”

  “Ms. Rose?” the man said.

  “That would be right. Yes, Emma Rose. Did you know her?”

  “I’d seen her a few times. Plus I saw her picture on KING’s news this morning. A lovely girl.”

  “May we come in?” Paul asked, asserting himself into the conversation.

  “No,” he said, backing off a little. “Floors were just waxed. Besides, no one is home. Just me and the housekeeper.”

  Housekeeper, too. Morton has it pretty good, Grace thought. She was lucky to get Shane to spring for a Merry Maid before Thanksgiving the previous year.

  “How come you didn’t tell us right away that Alex and Mr. Morton weren’t here?”

  “Sorry,” Mathias said. “I made an assumption.”

  The remark interested Grace. “What kind of an assumption?”

  Mathias rolled his shoulder a little; it was somewhat sheepish gesture done more for the effect of it than for any real feelings he had about offending anyone. “I thought you were collecting for the library or something,” he said.

  Grace was annoyed, but didn’t show it.

  The butler must be taking asshole lessons from his boss, she thought.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I guess. When will either Mr. Morton or his son be home?”

  He started to close the door. “Next week, I think.”

  As the door clicked shut, a voice could be heard. It was clear and unmistakable.

  “What did those jokers want?”

  It was the voice of a young man. Grace looked at her partner.

  “Guess Alex was home after all.”

  Paul nodded and Grace rang the bell again.

  Mathias answered. “Did you forget something?”

  “No, but evidently you did. You forgot that impeding a criminal investigation by lying is a punishable offense.”

  The servant looked flustered. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Cut the Mr. Belvedere crap,” Paul said. “We heard the kid. Get him. We want to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know. . . . He’s a boy. He’ll need his father’s permission.”

  “He’s over eighteen. Get him for us now. We’re trying to find a missing girl. Maybe he can help,” Grace said.

  As Mathias appeared to weigh his options, a voice from behind called out.

  “I’ll talk to ’em,” a young man’s voice said.

  It was Alex Morton, a nineteen-year-old, wearing his slacker uniform—a rumpled T-shirt and khaki shorts that hung so low Grace Alexander almost stared to make sure they weren’t about to fall off in mid stride. He had bushy brows and the kind of fawn eyes that girls couldn’t resist. That he was rich, had a restored Porche Targa, and had the attitude that the world owed him (“It isn’t easy having an old man like mine to live up to.”) probably didn’t hurt him one bit in the dating department.

  “Your father will need to be notified,” Mathias said.

  “Then, Jesus, Mathias, do your job. That’s why you get paid the big bucks.” There was no trace of irony in his voice.

  Grace wondered how it was that a seemingly nice girl like Emma could fall for a boy like Alex. Date him, yes, but anything more? Out of the question. What Richie Rich didn’t know was that he was a conquest as much as any girl.

  Alex stepped outside, saving Mathias the quandary of whether or not he should invite the police into the house. Alex lit up a cigarette and offered the light to Paul—not to Grace. While neither detective smoked, it was clear just what Alex Morton thought of women in general. He looked only in Paul’s direction when he spoke.

  “Fire away. This is, like, cool to be talking to the police. Lame that you think I know something, but I’m guessing you don’t have anything much to go on.”

  “Why is that?” Paul asked.

  The teenager shrugged. “Because I don’t know anything and you’re wasting your time here. Girl’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Grace bristled at the remark. “Why would you say she’s dead?”

  “Is she the good cop or the bad cop?” he asked, ignoring her question.

  “She’s a little of both,” Paul said. When the teenager looked over at a small gathering of neighbors, Paul rolled his eyes and mouthed the words Piece of work to Grace.

  She mouthed back, Piece of shit.

  Paul grinned and looked back over at the oblivious teenager, whose glare at Grace became a full-on glower.

  “I barely knew her. We messed around a few times. No biggie,” he said, drawing on his cigarette like it was going to get him high. Really high.

  “Her mother said that you were serious until a few weeks ago. Said Emma dumped you and you kind of took it bad,” Grace said, refusing to be ignored by the twerp standing in front of the venerable mansion that would, indeed, be his one day.

  “No one is serious at nineteen, lady,” Alex said.

  “Detective Alexander, if you don’t mind.”

  “Whatever. I dumped her. Big deal. I was tired of her. Too clingy. Wanting too much of my time.”

  “That’s interesting,” Grace said. “Let me write that down.” But she didn’t. She just stood there letting her remark soak in along with the fact that she was mocking him with her proclamation that anything he said was worth believing. “Her mother said you Facebook stalked her, called her a hundred times in two days, and sent over ten dozen red roses.”

  “That’s bullshit. I did not. I’m done talking with you. That bitch was crazy and so are you.”

  “Hey,” Paul said, “that’s enough of that. You mom and dad ever teach you manners?”

  “My mom ran off with my dad’s partner and my dad’s an asshole. So I guess not.”

  “Where were you last night, say from six p.m. to midnight?”

  “Home. Here. With my dad watching the tube. You can ask him. Ask Mathias, too. Don’t treat me like some punk criminal. I’m innocent. I haven’t seen her in weeks. No lie.”

  Alex Morton’s words were strange. While it wasn’t a huge leap from the idea that he was a person of interest in the case to punk criminal, it was a sudden one. No one was saying that they wanted him to “come down to the station” to make a statement. Yet Alex Morton was sure posturing like he’d been directly accused. A guilty conscience, maybe? That, naturally, presumed that he had a conscience at all.

  “You didn’t send her all those roses?” Grace asked.

  “Never,” he said.

  She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through some images she’d taken while at the Rose’s. She turned the phone with the screenshot of Emma’s Facebook page before Diana pulled the plug that afternoon. It was photo of bloodred roses, so many it could have been culled from a florist’s website. But it wasn’t. It had clearly been taken in Emma’s bedroom.

  She wrote: Creep sent these. Some people have too much money.

  “Never saw that. Bitch unfriended me.”

  Paul brightened. “Unfriended you? That’s interesting. Wonder why she did that?”

  “I’m done tal
king to you. I’ve got stuff to do.”

  Grace didn’t let him leave without a parting shot. She waited for that fleeting bit of eye contact that he afforded her. “Whoever bought that many roses had a lot of money . . . or his father’s credit card.”

  Alex gave her a look, said nothing, and went back inside. It would be hard to say if the gargantuan door slammed or if it always sounded that way.

  “He’s a liar,” she said as they walked toward the car. The onlookers, except for one, had quickly dispersed.

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “Through and through.”

  “We need to track him,” Grace said as a woman started toward them. “Every minute of his day. Did he drive somewhere? Get gas? Was he on a video cam at a Target or something?”

  “Dollars to donuts, he wasn’t home,” Paul said in one of his nonsensical retorts.

  The woman who rushed over was middle aged. She wore a skirt, boots, and a jacket trimmed in leather. She was a little more Annie Oakley than the neighborhood, but she said she lived across the street.

  “I’m Marla Hoffman. I rent the place over there. Are you here about our cats?” Her voice was breathless. “Minnie has been gone for two weeks, Sasha for seven. All of our cats are disappearing around here. I think that Alex boy is doing something to them.”

  Grace was caught off guard. “Cats? No, not here about cats. We’re here about a missing girl.” She pulled out Emma’s photo and the woman nodded enthusiastically.

  “Yes, I know her. Nice girl. Too nice for that kid. I saw him kick a dog and my other neighbor thinks that he’s been taking our cats. God knows why. He’s scary. If I didn’t have a lease on this place I’d get out of here tomorrow.”

  It crossed Grace’s mind that she ought to ask how the woman could afford the neighborhood. It wasn’t the kind of address just anyone went to for a rental, that was for sure.

  “Do you know when you saw her last?” Paul asked.

  Marla thought a moment.

  “That’s easy. The day before yesterday.” She glanced at the mansion towering behind the detectives. “In the afternoon. I came home from Pilates and she was standing outside stewing over something. We talked for a minute.”