The address Kendra gave me was located near the north end of Grand Street. A modest, single-story house set back on a large lot. The house was barely visible from the street, with just the top of the roofline sticking out above unkempt bushes that lined a tall fence between the residence and the street. What I could see looked gray in the pale light of the waning crescent moon. In addition to the bushes around the property, overgrown trees clumped together, their tangled limbs blocking the house as well. They looked like apple trees or some other fruit, their latticework of branches making a good shield despite their leaflessness this time of year. Combined with the tall evergreens between his house and the neighbors’, Leeds lived in relative isolation.
As the only car on the road this early in the morning, I didn’t want to draw attention to us, so I continued past and went around the corner to park.
“What now?” Chava said. “Should we break in and see what clues might lead us to where he’s keeping Kendra?”
“What is it with you breaking into people’s houses? Just because Hallings left his back door open doesn’t mean we’ll be able to just waltz into Leeds’s place.”
“So we find another way to get in.”
I didn’t answer her as I scoped out the street where I’d parked. A few porch lights were on, but the houses themselves were dark. The streetlights were set far apart, keeping the sidewalks mostly in shadow. I rolled the window down and listened. The neighborhood was quiet in the cold, pre-dawn hours of a winter morning.
“You stay here. I’m going to go see if anyone’s home.”
“I’m not staying here.”
“Chava, if you want to be my backup, you have to stay where you can actually do that—back me up. If I don’t come back in thirty minutes call the police.”
“And tell them what? My daughter broke into someone’s house and hasn’t returned? That will get you in trouble.”
“I’d rather be in trouble than dead. And you don’t have to tell them anything about me. Just tell them you think you saw someone breaking into Leeds’s address and get them to investigate a possible burglary. Tell them you think you heard gunshots; that will get their attention.”
“They’ll have your phone number if I call 911.”
“I know that. But this is the best I can do. Just take my cell. If I’m not back here at,” I looked at my watch, “four fifteen, call 911 and tell them what I told you.”
“This would be a lot easier if I had a cellphone too.”
“We’ll talk about that when this is all over,” I said, not wanting to admit she was right. I got out of the car and checked to confirm that my penlight worked and my Swiss army knife was stashed in my zippered pocket. It had everything from a small blade to a corkscrew in case I needed to serve wine and cheese at some point in this adventure. Even better, I patted my gun through my coat for reassurance before I walked around the corner toward Leeds’s place. I unbuttoned my coat for easy access to my weapon, though I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I’d noticed an alley behind the house, so I turned in there and got to the fence in back without mishap. I paused for a moment to listen again and still heard nothing. No lights were on in the alley, and the darkness made me feel less obvious than being on the street.
A fence encircled Leeds’s property, with a small, detached single-car garage facing the alley. Peering over the fence, I could see a picnic table in one corner, but other than that, it appeared empty. A concrete path led up to the door and a mudroom was attached to the back of the house. The small, glassed-in porch didn’t look hard to get into. The actual door to the house would have more complicated locks. Even so, the back door was less exposed than climbing over the fence in front, so it was my best bet.
The fence around the property was roughly five feet high. I took ahold of the top of it with my hands and gave it a shake to see how solid it felt. The boards threatened to fall over completely under my weight. With nothing around to stand on, climbing over would be awkward. I didn’t relish the prospect of collapsing in a heap of old lumber, impaling myself with rusty old nails and giving away my presence before I even got to the house.
Thinking I might be able to enter through the freestanding garage and into the yard, I twisted the handle on the garage door to see if it was locked. It was.
I had on a pair of thick gloves, which wouldn’t allow me to do the delicate work required to pick a lock, but I also had on a pair of silk gloves underneath—not so much for warmth as to keep from leaving fingerprints. Taking the thick outer gloves off, I could feel the cold air working to turn my digits into fingersicles.
Pulling lock picks out of my pocket, I clenched the penlight between my teeth to illuminate the garage door handle. I vowed never to let Chava know about my lock picking skills—she’d want me to teach her and I didn’t want to encourage her newfound enthusiasm for breaking and entering.
Of course, she might already know how to pick locks. Maybe that was how she really got us into Hallings’s house the other night. A line of thought I didn’t want to pursue.
The locking mechanism on the handle was simple, and I had it open in less than thirty seconds. Shoving my picks back into my pocket, I stayed crouched at the door, listening again. I didn’t hear anything in the quiet night, so I decided my tiny light and illicit behavior had gone unnoticed.
Slowly edging the rolling door up, I waited for the loud screech that would undoubtedly be forthcoming, especially if the door wasn’t opened very often. Residents didn’t usually use old garages like this one for storing their cars, preferring to park out front and relegating the old structure to storage.
The door started to squeak just after it got high enough for me to slide underneath, so I stopped raising it and rolled inside the garage. Flashing the light around quickly, I ascertained the absence of a car. The chinks in the walls made the temperature the same inside as it was outside. The room was basically empty except for a washer and dryer against one wall.
I muscled the door back down and checked my watch. Twenty-five minutes before Chava called the police. I should have given myself more time, but a tight deadline would keep me motivated.
The door into the yard wasn’t locked and I pushed it open and walked toward the back of the house. With no interior lights on, and no sign of the Lexus parked out front, it appeared Leeds wasn’t home, which could be bad luck for Kendra if he’d returned to wherever he had her stashed, but good luck for me.
Reaching the door to the mudroom, I turned the knob and found it locked as well. After assessing the lock, I pulled out a credit card I used for just such purposes. The name on the card wasn’t mine, in case it got left behind anywhere; it was one of those fake cards the credit card company sends out with their pleas for application. I slipped it between the door jam and the door, manipulating the catch to swing open. Stepping inside the porch, I pulled the door shut behind me and crouched down.
From my low vantage point, I would be invisible from the outside, should anyone else be creeping around the property in the dead of night. Leaning against the back door, I waited for any movement from inside. I didn’t expect any human beings to be sitting in the dark on the other side of the door, but I didn’t want to be surprised by any canine inhabitants. Better to know now rather than after I got inside. I scratched at the back door. Unlikely to wake anyone, but I should get a response if Fido lived there too.
After a moment of continued silence, I had reason to hope my little theory held true, and Leeds didn’t own a big, highly trained Rottweiler. I decided to chance it. If there wasn’t a dangerous guard dog on the other side, I still had Chava poised to call the cops in less than half an hour.
The lock to the house wasn’t much harder than the one to the garage, and I soon found myself standing in the kitchen. The house had an air of abandonment, and although my hunch that no one was home was unscientific, it gave me confidence. I moved quickly through the house, my coat unzipped should immediate access to my weapon become necessary. A hunch was one thing, a Smith and Wesson was something altogether more reliable.
At least, the gun was; I was less sure about myself.
I risked turning a light on. The second bedroom clearly served as an office and it seemed a good place to start looking for clues about where Leeds might have Kendra. Leaning against the wall was one of those ugly brown suitcases. It sure looked like it would fill the missing spot in the set we’d seen at the Hallings’s place. I had to be in the right house. Unzipping the bag, I found clothes in Kendra’s size and style. I didn’t think I’d find anything useful, but just in case, I checked through the entire bag.
I found a zippered pouch for cosmetics that felt too heavy to be full of cosmetics. It turned out to be stuffed with cash. Now I was irked. The amount totaled a lot more than she owed me. I stuffed the pouch into my coat pocket as best I could. If I found Kendra, she could have it back minus what was rightfully mine.
Keeping one ear to the ground for Leeds’s return and the other for Chava—whom I didn’t quite trust to stay put in the car—I got to work.
The innocuous appearance of Leeds’s small house must not have piqued her curiosity, because twenty-two minutes later I found her sitting in my driver’s seat with my cellphone on her leg.
“Find anything useful?” she asked.
“Maybe. Give me a minute,” I said, shoving the pouch into the glove box. Chava shot me a look of curiosity, but she must have sensed my urgency because she didn’t ask anything as I began shuffling through the files I’d grabbed from Leeds’s home office.
A moment later, I found what I was looking for.
“I think I know where he’s got her,” I said. “You drive, I’ll navigate.” I pulled my Thomas Brothers map out from the backseat of my car.
“Don’t you have GPS on this thing?” Chava asked as she started up the engine.
“Don’t gripe,” I replied. “At least I’m letting you drive.”