The 6th Target - James Patterson [42]
“Been a while for me, too.” Yuki sighed. “I not only don’t remember when, I don’t remember with whom!”
Cindy cackled, then Yuki put her on hold so she could take an incoming call. When Yuki came back on the line, she said, “Hey, girl reporter, Red Dog wants me. Gotta scoot.”
“Go, go,” Cindy said. “See you in court.”
Cindy hung up and turned on the dishwasher, then emptied the trash can. She tied a knot in the bag, went out into the hallway, and hit the elevator call button, and when the car clanked to a stop, she checked to make sure it was empty before she got in.
She thought again about Whit Ewing, and about Lindsay and Joe, and about how long-distance relationships were, by definition, roller-coaster rides.
Fun for a while, until they made you sick.
And now here was another reason to have a boyfriend who stayed in town — the sheer creepiness of living in this building alone. She hit B for “basement,” and the newly paneled old elevator rocked as it descended. A minute later, Cindy stepped out into the dank bowels of the building.
As she walked toward the trash area, she heard the sound of a woman crying, a sobbing that echoed and was joined by the screaming of a baby!
What now?
Cindy rounded a bend in the underground vault of the building and saw a blond-haired woman about her own age holding a baby over her shoulder.
There was a black trash bag lying open at the woman’s feet.
“What’s wrong?” Cindy asked.
“My dog,” the stricken woman cried. “Look!”
She bent, spread open the mouth of the trash bag so that Cindy could see the small black-and-white dog that was covered with blood.
“I left him outside for only a few minutes,” she said, “just to take the baby into my apartment. Oh, my God. I called the police to report that someone had stolen him, but look. Someone who lives here did this. Someone who lives here beat Barnaby to death!”
Chapter 58
IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, 8:30 a.m., four days after Madison Tyler’s abduction. Conklin and I were parked in a construction zone near the corner of Waverly and Clay, steam from our coffee condensing on the car windows as we watched the traffic weave around double-parked delivery vans, pedestrians spilling into the narrow, gloomy streets of Chinatown.
I was eyeballing one building in particular, a three-story redbrick house halfway down Waverly. Wong’s Chinese Apothecary was on the ground floor. The top two floors were leased to the Westwood Registry.
My gut was telling me that we’d find at least partial answers in that house — a link between Paola Ricci and the abduction . . . something.
At 8:35 the front door to the brick house opened and a woman stepped out, took the trash down to the curb.
“Time to rock and roll,” said Conklin.
We crossed the street and intercepted the woman before she disappeared back inside. We flashed our badges.
She was white, thin, midthirties, dark hair falling straight to her shoulders, her prettiness marred by the worry lining her brow.
“I’ve been wondering when we’d hear from the police,” she said, one hand on the doorknob. “The owners are out of town. Can you come back on Friday?”
“Sure,” Conklin said, “but we have a couple of questions for you now, if you don’t mind.”
Brenda, our squad assistant, swoons over Conklin, says he’s a “girl magnet,” and it’s true. He doesn’t work it. He’s just got this natural, hunky appeal.
I watched as the dark-haired woman hesitated, looked at Conklin, then opened the door wide.
“I’m Mary Jordan,” she said. “Office manager, bookkeeper, den mother, and everything else you can think of. Come on in . . .”
I shot a grin at Conklin as we followed Ms. Jordan across the threshold and down a hallway to her office. It was a small room, her desk at an angle facing the door. Two ladder-back chairs faced the desk, and a framed picture of Jordan surrounded by a dozen young women, presumably nannies, hung on the wall behind her.
I found Jordan’s apparent anxiety noteworthy. She chewed on her lower lip, stood up, moved a stack of three-ring binders