Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

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.”

“What did she say?”

“Typical teen stuff. Mad at someone, I guess, mad at that asshole Morton kid. Excuse my French. She said that she wished people were nicer.”

“Nicer?” Grace asked, her brow slightly raised.

Marla shrugged. “Yeah, nicer. I told her that people start out nice enough, but they shake that off soon enough.”

Paul nodded. He, apparently, agreed.

“We might need to take a statement later,” Grace said. “We’ll need your contact info.”

Marla reached into her purse and pulled out a silver-plated business card case. She worked in IT at Weyerhaeuser in nearby Federal Way. Despite the economy there was still money in IT. Marla probably made more than six figures, judging by her expensive clothes, Pilates class, silver card case. Maybe even platinum. That’s how she could afford the neighborhood.

When the Tacoma detectives got back in the car, Grace spoke first.

“Two lies on the tally sheet for Mr. Morton.”

Paul put the car in gear.

“Yeah, the fact that he hadn’t seen her in a long time,” he said. “The day before yesterday doesn’t qualify as a long time in my book.”

Grace checked her messages, her thoughts still wondering if Alex had any idea how things were shaping up against him. “Not hardly,” she said. “Plus we’ve got him dead to rights on the roses, too.”

They drove down the hill toward the bay, the waters smooth and dark as obsidian.

In the Morton mansion things were decidedly less tranquil. After the two detectives left, Alex Morton flopped on his bed and screamed into his pillow. Next he dialed his father’s cell phone number. No answer.

He’s never there when I need him!

Next, Alex dialed the office number. (“That one’s for losers,” his dad had said. “The people I want to reach me call direct.”) Calla, his father’s secretary for the past six years, answered. She was an attractive brunette with enough smarts to be an officer in the company, but for some reason, she never advanced out of the support function role she’d been hired into. A few speculated as to why, but no one dared to say anything. Her husband was Palmer Morton’s real estate business partner, Byron Jennings.

“I need to talk to my dad,” Alex said, barely hiding his frazzled nerves.

“Alex, he’s in a meeting,” Calla said. “Sorry. I can take a message.”

“I don’t care,” Alex said, his voice rising in anger loud enough that Calla pulled the phone away from her ear a little. “I need to talk to him.”

“He can’t be disturbed,” Calla said, looking through the plate-glass partition into the conference room, where Palmer Morton presided over an enormous architectural model of the mega condo and retail development The Pointe at Ruston Way, in Ruston. It was a crucial development that had the unfortunate distinction of being in the planning stages when the real estate market went kaput. New investors from Korea were in the conference room and Palmer was in the midst of his dog-and-pony show.

“You don’t get it,” Alex said, this time with a tone that was more than a little threatening. “Do you want HR, or better yet your husband, to know that you’ve been boning my dad?”

Calla looked around, swiveled her chair, and faced the window with the view to the choppy waters of the bay. Her back slightly hunched. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Alex, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Calla, you do,” Alex said. “Now go get him. I’m in trouble here and he needs to do some fixing. Get him now or you’ll not only be out of a job, you’ll be looking for a new man. But in your case, you better make that two.”

The call went through to Palmer Morton’s cell phone to a number even Alex didn’t know. Phone records would later show that father and son talked for forty-five seconds before ending the call.

For the first time, Emma Rose noticed a small red light in the corner of the room. It was a pinprick of red, like a taillight of a little airplane far, far away. She slid her body to the edge of the mattress and got up. It was up on the ceiling over the toilet bucket.

What was that red light? What was the creeper up to now? She wondered if maybe it was a smoke detector to keep the so-called apartment safe in the event of a fire. She remembered how those lights were tiny green ones and, to be fair, if the smoke alarm went off there was no place she could run to anyway.

What is it?

She stood on her tiptoes and strained to get a closer look. She tried to swipe at it with her hands, but it was just out of reach. She looked over at the bucket, still full of urine and feces. She knew that the contents of the bucket reeked. She was used to the smell, in the way she thought that a mother must get used to the stink of a baby’s vomit or diaper. Unpleasant, to be sure, but not something so terrible as to kill you.

Not like the creeper.

She looked over and the small red, white tip matchstick caught her eye. She went over, bending down to pick it up. She wished that it was a razor blade or something really useful. Something told her that she should hide it. She tucked the wooden match under the army blanket.

For later.

Next, Emma dumped the contents of the bucket onto the floor and turned it upside down. She climbed atop and strained to get at the little red light. She stood there on the bucket teetering as she finally made out four small letters on a small black box from which the light emerged.

S-O-N-Y.

Sony! She knew what kind of products the Japanese manufacturer of electronics made. Her mom had an old Sony Walkman that she’d finally ditched for an iPod a couple of years ago. Her uncle had a Sony video camera. Emma knew which of those items that had to be… a camera. The creeper had been watching her every move from the minute he held her in the prison cell he referred to as the apartment.