Robin Burcell - The Bone Chamber

“I’m assuming,” Amber said, “that you didn’t care about any of the normal tows, drunk driving, that sort of thing. Only the unoccupied tows?”

“Good guess.”

She tapped the closest stack. “These are tows that were claimed by the registered owners. And these,” she said, tapping the second stack, “are for tows that the ROs didn’t claim. Not as many, but if you’re dealing with a dead registered owner, might explain why they didn’t claim their cars?”

“Certainly one explanation.” Sydney took the first stack, looking them over. “Don’t suppose any of them are actually linked to a missing person?”

“One actually, but to a man, and I thought you were interested in missing women.”

“At this point, I’ll take anything suspicious.”

Amber dug the report off the bottom of the first stack. “Originally it was entered as stolen. I remember it, because the girl came in and gave some convoluted story about people following her boyfriend. One of those truly paranoid types, government plots, tinfoil, the works, but the real story was that she was pissed off because her boyfriend borrowed the car, and he hasn’t been seen since. She reported it stolen, but it had really been towed. Boyfriend’s still missing, though. As whacked as she was, I’d hazard a bet he took off on purpose.”

“Probably nothing, but I’ll check it out.”

“This one, however,” Amber said, removing another report, “was towed a few days ago not two blocks from the Smithsonian. Figured since you were asking about that particular locale, it might fit.”

Syd eyed the car’s description, a Ford Tempo, then the registered owner, a young woman who lived about ten minutes from the Smithsonian. She thanked Amber, took the reports, and after a quick stop at the ladies’ room, headed there first.

A dead end. The car was towed due to “No Parking” signs erected for some road construction, something the owner hadn’t caught because she had been out of town on a business trip. The next several on Syd’s list were similar, and the owners present and accounted for. It was dark out now, and she was getting hungry. She looked at the other registered owners, eyeing the tow sheet from the so-called whack job Amber had told her about, a young woman named Penny Dearborn.

Everything about the tow was wrong. From the location, the farthest from the Smithsonian in comparison to all the other cases, and an ex-boyfriend missing, when Syd needed a woman missing. What it did have going for it was that it was somewhat closer to Scotty’s apartment, which meant she could swing by, talk to the woman, then wait for Scotty to get back, since she was starved and had no intention of eating peanut butter for dinner.

Penny Dearborn’s apartment was dark, at least the upstairs windows. The two downstairs windows were boarded over, and she wondered if anyone still lived there. Sydney parked Scotty’s Jeep about two doors down, then walked up the well-lit street. She kept to one side of the front door, knocked, and looked up at the darkened window upstairs. A few moments later, Sydney heard what sounded like footsteps descending an interior staircase, and then the door opened, revealing a tall, thin blond woman with a gaunt face.

Sydney held open her credentials. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick, FBI. Are you Penny Dearborn?”

The woman glanced up and down the street before looking at Sydney, then nodding. “Yeah, why?”

“I have a few questions about your car being towed, and the missing person’s report on your boyfriend, Xavier Caldwell.”

Penny gave a cynical smile. “Not so paranoid, am I?”

Syd figured that remained to be seen. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Again the woman gave that look up and down the street, then stepped aside allowing Sydney to enter. The room reminded Sydney of her own place, filled with boxes stacked around the walls, some taped shut, others still open, filled with books, newspaper-wrapped items, and other possessions tossed in with less care.

“You’re moving?”

“Tomorrow. Which isn’t soon enough. I haven’t had electricity in two weeks, and I’ve been broken into twice in the last week, never mind the drive-by shootings from the gang war. Used to be a nice neighborhood. But I have to draw the line when bullets start flying through my living room window,” she said, nodding toward the boarded-up windows on either side of the TV. “Goddamned landlord says he’s deducting it from my deposit. Bastard.”

“I’m hoping this won’t take but a couple of minutes.”

“Mind if we talk upstairs. I’m a bit paranoid these days…”

“Upstairs is fine.” Sydney followed her into a bedroom, unlit, except by the glow from a streetlamp outside. Like the downstairs, this room was filled with boxes stacked around the perimeter of the double bed in the center of the room.

The woman sat on the bed, and Sydney stood near the dresser next to the window that looked out over the street below. “I understand you made a missing person’s report on your boyfriend?”

“Not sure why I bothered. I should’ve figured out what he was up to, ever since he hooked up with Miss Hoity-Toity.”

Sydney had the sinking feeling that this was nothing of any consequence. Spurned lover. “What happened?” she asked, more as a way to urge the girl to get on with the story so Sydney could get out of there.

“Happened? Xavier hooks up with this girl from his religion class or political history, or whatever it was, and wants to borrow my car. They’re going to go talk to someone about a conspiracy theory,” she said in a voice that told Sydney that the only conspiring was that which was taking place in the backseat of said car. “I used to think he was so profound. We’d sit and talk for hours over coffee about how every country’s governments were all working to keep the people in the dark, how everything from 9/11 to the Catholic Church was all part of some big conspiracy, just like the conflicts in the Mideast. And then he met her . They were in the same class.” She looked away, wiped a couple tears from her face with the back of her hand. “And she said she had proof on the back of a dollar bill that it was all being run by shadow governments and the Freemasons.”

There were a lot of nuts out there thinking that Freemasons were taking over the world, and the proof was on the back of the dollar bill. Amber undoubtedly had the right of it about this particular case, when she’d put together the reports for Sydney. Whacked. Even so, Syd was sympathetic. The woman had lost her lover to someone who told a better story. “Proof?” Sydney asked. “On the dollar bill?”

“Yeah. Like the eye on the pyramid. And the Star of David that points to the word MASON. He just got all into it. Found his kindred spirit, he says. Hope you don’t mind, but it’s fate, he says. Fate that he forgets to give me his half of the rent money, and the utility bill. I have no power, no phone, and I got evicted when I couldn’t come up with the rent. And then maybe two weeks ago, he calls up and says they’re in trouble. That they want to borrow my car again, because he’s got to get to the airport, and he thinks they’ve been following him and her both.”

“Who was following them?”

“He didn’t say.”

“This girl, she have a name?”

“Hell if I know. I never actually met her. She was an assistant to some professor in Xavier’s history or archeology class at UVA.”

“You know the professor’s name?”

“Woods, I think. Anyway, Xavier started meeting her for coffee, just like he used to take me. Only with her, he became twice as paranoid. He actually believed this crap.” She sat down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I know it’s stupid, and I even used to agree with him, but once he met her, all that stuff he spouted just sounded…annoying. Like a cop-out. Everything that went wrong in his life, he blamed on the government. The fact we got evicted from this apartment? Government plot. His checks kept bouncing, because his deposit was lost? Government plot. All of it proved his point that they were going to take over world banking. At one point he had tinfoil on every window and wouldn’t talk without the water running. He let them turn off the phones, because they were tapped. I swear he had escape routes planned,” she said, sweeping her hand around the room to point up into the closet, now emptied. “The attic, the bathroom. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s one thing to rail against the government over coffee, but at some point you still have to pay your rent.”