Chapter 37
“You’re right. She’s from the neighborhood,” Allen said. “We lived a building apart at Robert Taylor. I don’t remember how we met, just that one day she was there. Everywhere I would go, there she’d be, so we started running together. My family was poor, but hers was poorer. The breaks never seemed to go her way. I had a chance at college. She never got close, but she was smart, resourceful. She always made things happen for herself.”
“Your mother?”
“She worked in the neighborhood, managing a dry cleaners. She was killed my senior year. She did push medical school, not maliciously, but I wanted this.”
“Chandler knew what your mother wanted?”
She nodded. “Kaye worked part-time at that same cleaners with my mother. After she was killed, I was free to go into whatever I wanted. Eventually, Kaye earned enough to go to community college and earn an associate’s degree. Things changed when I became pregnant. I withdrew from everyone—that included her. I moved. I cut all contact. I had the baby, considered keeping it, then didn’t. I came back, but not to Northwestern. I picked up where I left off. Kaye just popped up one day at my place. I don’t know how she found me, but I couldn’t shake her. When I got the job with Halliwell, she begged to work there, too. She was relentless. I was forced to put her name through. I was miserable the entire time.”
“And when you left to work with Devin?”
“I thought I could just go, leave her behind, but there she was again. As the years went on, I resented her more and more, and she held on tighter and tighter.”
“You could have ended it by going to the police,” I said.
Allen shook her head. “You don’t know Kaye.”
I thought of Chandler’s visit to my office the day of Sewell’s murder. It had seemed odd at the time, her wanting to hire me. But what if it’d been about something else? She’d been with me when Sewell’s body was discovered. Had she planned on me being her alibi? I remembered something else, too.
“She came to my office the day Sewell was killed. She told me you’d received another letter.”
Allen looked exhausted, deflated. “I haven’t gotten anything. I thought I could slowly, steadily push her away, assert myself. I thought that would make the break, when it came, much easier. Now you think because I lied, because I was breaking away, she’s coming after me next?”
“Unless she comes after me first. I’m the problem you have now, aren’t I? I’m the one digging up your secrets. Does she own a gun?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you?”
Allen nodded. “For personal protection. It’s in my safe.”
“May I see it?”
She appeared to brace herself. This was the diva, the game-player, the invented persona brought low, but this time she was alone. “Why do you need to see it?”
“I mentioned the gun down the sewer hole? That hole’s in the park, not far from where Chandler was found. I don’t think she would have tossed her own gun down there, do you? You’re taking the magazine from her. You lied to her and were planning on dropping her, ruining her. Maybe she planned on ruining you first? The great Vonda Allen, a victim of murder . . . or a suspect in a string of them. Would you mind checking?”
She looked like she was running through everything in her head, every time Chandler had come to the rescue or things had just “happened” to work out for her. She knew. Deep down, she had to.
I thought Allen’s days were numbered the second Chandler found out she’d planned on closing down Strive. That had to be when Chandler started terrorizing her. She wanted Allen to suffer, to fear for her life. Then Allen dangled a job in front of her, a job she must have found out didn’t exist. No more letters or flowers. Something else was coming. I could feel it. I think Allen could feel it, too.
Allen walked over to a framed oil painting of an old man in African garb and swung it open to reveal a wall safe with an electronic keypad. Her back to me, she blocked the pad before tapping in the code and opening the safe. She rummaged inside, moving things right, left, checking. Then turned around.
“It’s gone.”
“A Glock seventeen?”
“Registered to me. It’s been here in the same spot. I don’t . . .”
“Chandler has access to that safe?”
“It and everything else.” She closed the safe, swung the painting back. “All this time, all these years, she’s been standing right behind me, wanting to take my place, then plotting to kill me?”
“Or frame you for attempted murder. She doesn’t necessarily have to kill you to destroy you.”
Allen looked like she was in a daze, on overload. “All those people. My mother. She’s, she’s . . .”
“Yeah, she is.” I picked up the phone and called Tanaka.
* * *
I sat in Allen’s pristine kitchen, with Isabella watching me, smiling. Tanaka and another detective, named Grainger, were in with Allen and her lawyers. I was out here wasting time. No sign of the Stockys, naturally, but I wasn’t done with those two.
I drummed my fingers on the countertop, eyed my watch. They’d been in there now for over an hour, likely getting the same stunned stupidity that I’d gotten. I was supposed to stay put until they all got to me. That was how Tanaka had said it. “Stay put.” It’d rankled an hour ago, and it still did.
I grinned at Isabella; she grinned back. I peered down the long hallway toward Allen’s office, heard murmurs coming from inside the room, nothing more. It was times like these that I regretted not having a badge.
“Agh, this is crap.” I stood, waved good-bye to Isabella, and booked it. Tanaka knew where to find me if she needed me. I wanted to talk to Chandler while she was still a captive audience, before the police took their shot, before she figured everyone was onto her, and decided to run. I had a good feeling she had seized on Rogers’s desperation for contact and then, hoping to stir things up, had pointed him in Allen’s direction, which had almost taken Ben out, so we had personal business to settle.
But when I got to the hospital, Chandler wasn’t there. She’d checked herself out, and no one could tell me when, why, or how. I drove to her apartment, but I had a feeling I might already be too late. If she’d been desperate to leave the hospital with a fresh bullet wound in her side, she likely hadn’t gone home to take a nap. She could be halfway to Timbuktu by now, ahead of the law, beyond anyone’s reach.
I knocked at her door, but there was no answer. I tried the knob, expecting the door to be locked, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t. I pushed the door open, then stood there, listening. The apartment was dark, eerily quiet, and the air was so still I could almost hear my heart pounding. It felt empty, but I was still in the hall, not in Chandler’s living room. She could be hiding inside the apartment or dead inside it. I had no way of knowing. I looked up and down the hall. No nosy neighbors. Either I went in, or I didn’t.
“Chandler?” I called.
No answer.
“Great.” I could lose my license. I should really call Tanaka or even 911. Why didn’t I? Why was I standing here? Ben. I had to see this through to the end. I checked the hall again, then tiptoed in, leaving the lights off, listening out for anything I needed to worry about.
I crept down the foyer, and ended up in the front room, where I stopped, gaped. “Oh no.”
The room was a carbon copy of Allen’s living room, the same color scheme, the same plants, the same paintings on the walls, the same doodads scattered around. This place was much smaller than Allen’s opulent aerie, but everything appeared to be here, only on a smaller scale. I eased farther in, then stopped when I heard a bell tinkling and spotted in a corner a white cat with green eyes, just like the cat Allen had.
A hall led to the back of the apartment. It was dark, and there was no one in it, but I could see doors on either side, rooms I’d need to check. I moved forward, keeping to the edges of the hall, left side, until I came to the first door. I turned the knob, pushed the door back. Bathroom. Empty. I closed the door, moved on. Next door, across the hall. Bedroom. It was a frilly explosion of white and purple, everything from the duvet to the elaborate bedspread and curtains. Did this mirror Allen’s place, too? I’d never made it to Allen’s bedroom, so I had no way of knowing. I checked everything, drawers, closet, under the bed, but found nothing but Chandler’s neatly folded clothes, shoes, and an expensive set of luggage. Maybe she hadn’t gone far? Or maybe she had more than one set?
The drapes were open; the sun was setting. I’d soon lose the light. I crept out of the bedroom, kept moving toward the back of the apartment. The kitchen was next. It was neat, looked barely used, everything in its place, no dirty dishes, nothing left on the counters. It was as if Chandler had been a ghost in her own home, barely leaving a mark behind.
I headed back up the hall, passed a small utility room full of mops and cleaners neatly lined on orderly shelves. There was just one more door to check, but when I turned the knob, it was locked. I stopped, stepped back. Who had a locked door in their house? What was that smell? Sickly sweet. Slightly off. Musty. It wasn’t the smell of death, which I was familiar with, but something I couldn’t quite distinguish.
I checked around me. Still the same quiet, the same emptiness. The place was clear, except for this one room, the room with the locked door. I inhaled, tried the knob again, shouldered it, felt a little give, stepped back to think it through. I’d wandered off the path of the righteous back at the front door. I was on shaky ground here anyway you cut it. I inspected the door. It wasn’t as thick as Allen’s. Tanaka was going to put me under the jail, and Marcus would be happy to visit me there, just to gloat. Whatever. I peddled back, took a running start, and rammed the door. The first hit appeared to loosen the lock and twist the hinges. The second one busted the door open. And there it was, Chandler’s shrine to Allen, the woman she had shadowed and harassed for years.
There were dozens of photographs and small personal items that were obviously Allen’s displayed carefully on a long table—a compact with the initials V A spelled out in diamonds, a monogrammed handkerchief with the same letters on it, and a pair of old eyeglasses. I turned around in a slow circle to take it all in, before my eyes fell at last on a shelf of dying flowers in glass vases. Allen’s flowers: the flowers Chandler had sent her, the ones Allen had ordered her to destroy. They were all there, dying by degrees. That was the smell I’d noticed—organic decay. And against a far wall, on a shelf lined in red velveteen, sat a scuffed purse, a man’s watch, a framed photograph of Deton and Henry Peets, and a couple of old billfolds. I found Philip Hewitt’s driver’s license, credit cards, and money inside the first billfold. The second held only two items—an ID card to StreetWise, a newspaper published by the homeless, and an expired meal ticket to one of the local missions, both for a Lyndon Barnes Jr.
“Who’s Lyndon Barnes?”
I thought I’d ID’d all of Chandler’s victims, but there were obviously others. How many more? I picked up a folded piece of paper that looked like it had been trampled on, but I knew what it had to be before I even opened it up. Dontell Adkins’s letter of recommendation. Dontell’s grandmother had taken comfort in knowing a kind woman had stopped to hold his hand while he lay dying. Safe bet that woman had been Chandler. She hadn’t been there to ease Dontell’s fears in his final moments. She had been there to get that letter back.
These were Chandler’s trophies, her prizes.
The purse belonged to Linda Sewell; her wallet and keys were inside. The woman’s wallet belonged to Chandler herself. Was this her idea of a joke? A stack of white paper and a handful of red fine-point markers lined up like pickets in a fence sat on a writing table. The letters had come from here. I rushed out of the room, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket as I went. I dialed Tanaka’s number.
“Where the hell are you? I told you to stay put.”
“Chandler checked herself out of the hospital.” I moved fast for the front door. “She isn’t at her apartment, but she’s built a shrine to Allen, complete with items she took from each of her victims—Hewitt, Sewell, Adkins, even a guy I’d never heard of, Lyndon Barnes Jr. Try running the name. See if it matches any unsolved homicides.”
“Slow down. What? Where are you?”
I closed Chandler’s front door so that it was back the way I’d found it. “Are you still at Allen’s?”
“No. I’m on my way to the hospital to talk to Chandler. Wait. Did you just say she checked herself out?”
“Yes. You’re too late. She’s long gone. She’s not home, either. There are no signs that she’s even been back here. The place looks like a tomb. She’s running.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Don’t worry about it. She’s got no reason to come back here, but she could be heading for Allen.”
“Then that’s a no go. We left her with her lawyers and her security team.”
Chandler would be hard pressed to get past all that, I thought, especially in her condition. Maybe she had decided to just cut her losses and go. If so, she had a healthy head start.
“You need to see her place,” I said. “And then you need to find her.”
Tanaka said, “I need to talk to you first. Will you just stop and . . . Oh, screw it.”
The line went dead.