Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“The burner phone hasn’t come online since the last call from John Doe,” Guppo told them. “The only other call in the phone records was that Sammy’s Pizza order, but we don’t have any records to nail down who made it. We’ve tracked down most of the store’s delivery drivers. The film people have generated a lot of business this month, but nothing we could tie specifically to the phone call.”

Stride rocked back in his chair. He wasn’t happy. “Anything else?”

There was silence in the room.

“Well, we’ve got barely two days,” he went on. “We better get busy. Once the film crew wraps up and leaves town, the odds of our putting together a case are next to zero. If that’s true, Dean Casperson is going to get away with murder again.”

As the meeting broke up, Maggie felt Serena tug on her sleeve and pull her away from the others in the room.

“So?” Serena whispered in her ear. “Anything you want to tell me?”

Maggie grinned. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Come on, is it that obvious?”

“It is to me.”

“Well, I’m going through the breakup blues with Troy, and Cab’s doing the same thing with his ex. We figured we might as well enjoy a little physical therapy together.”

“I’m sorry about you and Troy,” Serena said.

“Yeah, that’s on me. As usual.”

Serena shot a quick glance across the room at Cab Bolton. “He’s easy on the eyes, that’s for sure. He doesn’t exactly fit in Duluth, though, does he? I can’t see him diving into a tater tot hot dish.”

“Um, hello,” Maggie pointed out. “Does someone remember walking off the airplane from Vegas in her baby blue leather pants?”

Serena winked. “I’m a hot dish, too, baby.”

“Go away.”

Serena chuckled and strolled out of the conference room. Maggie and Cab were the only two people left inside. The room was warm and still smelled of pizza. Cab sat where he had during the meeting, laying out photographs from a file one by one across the table in front of him. Maggie came around the table and could see that the photographs had been taken in the woods where Peach Piper’s frozen body had been found.

Cab, who was as smooth and glamorous a man as she’d ever met, was crying.

“It’s probably better not to look at those,” Maggie murmured as she sat down next to him.

“I need to see it.”

Cab didn’t say anything. He picked up one of the photographs, which showed a close-up of Peach’s face, still dusted with snow crystals, looking angelic and peaceful. It was easy to imagine her smiling and opening her eyes as if this were just a game, except for the bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. He stared at it and couldn’t seem to put it down.

“I’ll arrange for the body to come home,” Cab said softly. “Peach had no family. I want to take care of everything.”

“Of course.” Maggie added after a pause, “Regardless of what happens to Dean Casperson, the man who actually did this to her is dead. There’s justice in that.”

Cab finally turned the photograph facedown. He retrieved all the pictures and returned them to the file folder, then closed it and put his hands on top. His blue eyes turned to Maggie, and his jaw hardened in determination. Grief was done. Time to move on.

“What about Peach’s notes?” he asked. “Did they give you anything useful?”

“We didn’t find any notes,” Maggie replied. “John Doe got to her apartment first. He cleaned everything out.”

“You found nothing at all?”

“No. The only evidence left in her apartment was the Chinese food receipt that took us to the house where she was spying.”

Oddly, Cab didn’t look unhappy at this news. In fact, a smile crept over his face, and Maggie didn’t understand it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Peach was one of the most secretive people you’ll ever meet,” Cab explained. “Her nickname was Peach Paranoid. She hid everything. She had backups of everything. Trust me, I know that girl. Peach left something behind. We just need to find it.”

Serena twisted the knob and opened the front door at Aimee Bowe’s rental house. She knelt in the doorway and checked the lock to make sure there were no signs of tampering, but the latch was old and no longer clicked securely into place.

Inside, she took off her boots on the mat and explored the house in her stocking feet. There was dried mud on the floor, but she and Guppo had brought that in. She retraced their search from the previous night in her head and realized that they’d looked for Aimee only in the obvious places. The bedrooms. The bathrooms. The porch. There were plenty of hiding places for someone who didn’t want to be found.

Serena didn’t know whether to believe Aimee’s story about someone hiding inside. The actress had been drugged and nearly delusional the previous night, so she could have imagined the whole thing. However, Serena had seen footprints in the snow outside when she’d responded to Aimee’s first call. Someone had been there. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that whoever it was had come back.

The trouble was everything else that Aimee had said.

I knew they were going to be put me in the box.

They’ve been watching me for weeks.

Sometimes I channel other people.

None of it made sense.

She made sure that the house was really empty. She checked the places she’d overlooked the night before. The closets. The basement. The garage. She even brought in a ladder and pointed her flashlight around the attic. She found nothing up there but dust and spiderwebs.

As she stood on tiptoe on the ladder steps, however, she heard something unusual in the house. She swung around quickly and nearly lost her balance. Her flashlight lit up the shadows of the hallway.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Serena climbed down the ladder and returned to the living room. Through the porch windows, the bed of snow stretched down the hillside. The dark lake merged with the dark clouds. She flipped on a light switch, but the light was broken. The house felt cold. She spotted the thermostat on the wall and found that the inside temperature was fifty-nine degrees. Aimee hadn’t set it that low. Not a Los Angeles girl.

There was a bitter draft from somewhere.

She checked the porch and found the back door was open. Raw air chilled the space. When she tried to shut the door, the wind nudged it open again. There was no mystery about it. She did a tug-of-war with the breeze as she tried to secure the latch, and finally she grabbed a chair and wedged it under the doorknob. The chair rattled, but the door stayed closed.

Then she heard a noise again.

It was almost right behind her. She spun and saw nothing as she peered into the living-room shadows. She didn’t move, and her hand edged closer to the butt of her gun as a precaution. As she stood there, the same noise beckoned her into the other room. It was a whistle, like someone softly alerting her that she wasn’t alone. It happened twice. Hey there, hey there .

“Is someone in the house?” she called loudly. “This is the police.”

But the living room was empty. She wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. There was no way anyone could have gotten inside without her hearing him, and she was certain that she’d searched the entire house.

Hey there.

The low whistle taunted her again. This time it came from the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, as if whoever it was had traveled invisibly from one end of the house to the other. She’d already been in the bedroom, and she knew it was empty, but she retraced her steps and assessed the gloomy interior from the doorway.