Burton drove straight to Jess’s, parked and walked the perimeter of her house before coming inside. There was no evidence that Mia had been forcibly taken and every reason to believe she had left on her own.
Jess met him in the living room with a tray of cake and coffee. The little dog nearly leaped into his arms when he walked in the door. He put them both aside briskly and began to pace Jess’s small living room.
Where would she have gone? If she was on her own steam, where would she go? Carol was dead, and he had just come from Diane’s…
Trish.
It wasn’t much but it was all he had. He didn’t have Trish’s cellphone number so he called Information and got it. The phone rang and rang. Who doesn’t carry her cellphone with them? he thought impatiently as he waited. Did he even know a woman who wasn’t constantly checking her phone to see who had called?
“This is Trish Barnes’ phone,” a familiar voice said on the other line. “Who’s this?”
“Karen?”
“Jack?”
“What are you doing with Trish’s phone?”
“What I’m doing is screening her calls while she lies in a hospital bed a few breaths shy of a coma.”
Burton heard a faint voice in the background say, “Don’t exaggerate, Karen. I’m fine.”
Karen spoke to Jack. “She is not fine. That turd of a husband of hers broke her arm.”
“Who? Keith?”
“Yes, Keith. This time he put her in the hospital. I’m forcing her to bring charges against him.”
“Where is he?”
“Who knows? But they’re out looking for him.”
The voice came back stronger from the hospital bed. “And he’ll be madder than ever when they find him.”
Karen turned from the phone to speak to Trish. “Him being mad is not something you need to worry about ever again, Trish. Do you understand me?”
Burton heard a muted response from Trish but couldn’t hear what she said. “I was hoping maybe Trish had heard from Mia today,” he said. “She’s gone missing.”
Karen spoke to Trish. “Did Mia Kazmaroff call you today?” She came back to the phone. “She says no. She was too busy getting the crap beat out of her to take phone calls. I hope they nail that bastard to the Lawrenceville water tower.”
“When did he attack Trish?” It wasn’t much to go on but if Mia went to talk to Trish, maybe she got in the middle of something? Or maybe she found Keith instead?
“Four hours ago. Why?”
Yeah, the timeline fit. Mia had been missing for three. But how would the two meet up?
“Hold on, Jack, I just remembered when Trish called me, she had to use the landline because she couldn’t find her cellphone at first.”
“You think Keith took it?”
“Well, I’ve got it right now so he didn’t take it with him, but he definitely moved it from her purse where she usually keeps it.”
“Karen, do me a favor and check out the recent calls, will you?”
A moment passed as she scanned the list of calls on the phone. “Crap,” she said.
“She called, didn’t she? Mia called?”
“No, it’s an outgoing call, Jack. Keith called her about three and a half hours ago.”
Burton turned and stared out the picture window in Jess’s living room. She and the dog had retreated to the kitchen to make dinner and give him the quiet he needed on the phone.
Why would Keith call Mia? Why would Mia agree to meet him?
“Jack?”
He snapped his attention back to the phone. “Yeah?”
“Trish wants to know why you think Mia would have called her.”
“It’s not important.”
Karen gave a sound of disgust. “It’s because she suspects Trish, doesn’t she? That woman is certifiable. Come on, Jack. Trish? Seriously?”
“Can you ask her if there’s any place Keith might go, you know, to be alone or lick his wounds? They got a cabin up in the mountains or something?”
Karen turned away to speak to Trish and it was all Burton could do not to urge her to hurry. Finally, she came back to the phone. “Sorry, Jack, no. She says they never went anywhere and trust me, Keith isn’t the kind of guy to lick any wounds. He has no conscience whatsoever.”
“Okay, well, thanks, Karen, and tell Trish thanks too and I hope she feels better.”
He hung up and sat in the living room, holding his phone, as the light leached from the sky. It got dark by five o’clock these days. He knew, if Mia was in trouble, every minute was critical.
Jess came to the opening from the kitchen, a mixing bowl in her hands, the little dog at her feet. “Is it too soon to report a missing person?” she asked quietly.
He knew she knew the answer to that as well as he did.
“I’ll find her, Jess,” he said.
“I know.”
He stood up and looked back outside the window but there was only darkness. Why would Keith want her? What was Keith’s state of mind? Had he just lost it? If Karen put Trish’s feet to the fire about the domestic abuse charge, that could finish things for Keith in the department.
Could make a man pretty desperate…
Fact is, Keith was Dave’s partner in crime as far as using Ecstasy and screwing the world. Did they have a falling out? It would explain why Carol—the other part of the threesome—might not live too long to tell any tales. Especially if she knew who killed Dave…
“Jack?”
He looked away from the window and saw Jess pointing to the coffee table where his phone was vibrating. He picked it up and looked at the screen.
“Hey. You think of something?”
“Trish said maybe Keith might go to their storage unit.”
“A storage unit?”
“She says it’s really more like a small warehouse space. They were trying to start an eBay business and they—”
“The address, Ange. What’s the address?” He was jogging to his car before he even finished speaking.
“Four ten Orleans Court. It’s off of Johnson Ferry in East Cobb.”
Burton knew it wouldn’t help to get pulled over for speeding and he didn’t have time to explain if he did. He hesitated to call 911 on a crime he wasn’t sure was being committed and then decided he couldn’t be hated any more than he already was downtown.
It was the week before Thanksgiving and the traffic jam during rush hour between Doraville and East Cobb was almost not navigable. He forced himself not to jump on the Perimeter—what had been an average speed of seventy miles an hour this afternoon would have ground to a stop by now. He would have to take surface roads, blow past every stop sign that wasn’t attached to a school bus, and hope there wasn’t construction on top of the usual delays.
Doraville to East Cobb the week before Thanksgiving? He’d be lucky to make it in an hour. He called in a suspected B&E and gave the address for the storage facility. If Dispatch checked his phone number and ID’d him, they might pass that information on or they might not. If they did, he hoped it didn’t result in them canceling the 911.
He checked his GPS to confirm the address was where he thought it was. As crazy as taking Holcomb Bridge to Roswell was in order to get to East Cobb, it was even crazier to take the more direct route of Abernathy Road since that went right past the second biggest mall in the southeast and was the whole reason for the crap traffic this week in the first place.
Assuming the traffic cops had their hands full, he pulled out of his lane of stalled traffic on Mount Vernon and drove onto the sidewalk to reach Holcomb Bridge. There he gunned it, expecting and getting seasoned Atlanta commuters’ forbearance.
Spend six months in Atlanta traffic, he thought, as he swerved around an ill-placed fire hydrant, and you’ve seen it all.
He knew the back entrance to Johnson Ferry and thanked God for it. Coming from the south, Johnson Ferry, the main artery through East Cobb and the tract home neighborhoods of Woodstock and Roswell, would be jammed for at least two hours with everyone coming home from work. Nobody came at it from the north heading south—not at six in the evening unless you were some poor sap working the night shift on Pill Hill.
His GPS told him that Orleans Court was a dead end street and when he finally turned into it, careful not to squeal his tires in the process, he saw the only business on it was a warehouse of storage facilities. And not a single cop car in sight.
Damn! Did they ignore his call or were they all playing by the rules driving through Atlanta rush hour traffic?
The parking lot was empty but he knew that didn’t mean anything. Most of these places had rear parking for their loading docks. He turned to the back and saw a lone truck parked there. He stopped four spaces away, hopped out and opened his trunk.
He grabbed his bolt cutters and ran to the garage door directly in front of where the truck was parked. In his experience, people really were as stupid as they acted. Trying to silence the pounding of his heart and the panting of his own excited breaths, he stood by the door and put his ear to it.
Nothing. Not movements, not voices, not footsteps.
He licked his lips and tried to listen harder, to block out the hum of traffic on Johnson Ferry, and the deafening, urgent fear that resounded in his head that told him he was too late and this was not where she was…
When the scream came—muffled and coated with agony—through the door, he nearly dropped the bolt cutters. Recovering quickly, he positioned the cutters and snapped through the heavy padlock, then tossed them aside and raked up the garage door, spilling light into the darkened back loading bay in incremental slices. He bent down and slipped under the door before it was fully raised, reaching for his gun before he realized he’d left it in the car.
She was kneeling in the middle of the room, her arms chained over her head and fastened to a pulley that would allow her to be lifted and lowered. She was practically naked, her head slumped forward on her chest, her hair a curtain shrouding her face.
He ran to her, looking around for Keith, but they were alone. Glancing up he saw a door at the top of a small set of stairs. A door that was slowing self-closing behind whomever had just fled.
A small moan from Mia resolved his brief indecision. She was alive. She could testify against Keith. Burton didn’t need to chase him. He found the winch that controlled the pulley attached to her chains and gently released it until she crumpled to the cement floor. He ran to her, stepping over an electric cattle prod, and gathered her into his arms. With one hand, he pried his cellphone out of his jeans pocket and called for an ambulance.
He heard the truck start up outside and drive away as he gently touched her face. Her body was bloodied and covered with bruises.
“Mia,” he said softly. “Darlin’, can you hear me?”
It was all he could do not to race after Keith, pull him out of his truck and beat him to death. A pounding in his ears blotted out any background noise as the fury pulsed through him. He exhaled a long breath and lifted her onto his lap tugging a section of hair from her battered face.
“Talk to me, baby,” he said. “Come on, Mia.”
He felt the tension release from his shoulders when her eyes fluttered open, at first hesitantly and then, groggily, but open.
“There’s my girl,” he said, his heart pounding with relief. “I’ve got you now. You’re safe. You’re going to be fine.”
What the hell had that monster done to her? His eyes fell on the cattle prod.
“Jack?”
She was trying to look at him, trying to focus. She winced in pain and gave a little cry.
“It’s okay, Mia, I’m here,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“What…what happened?” she asked, her voice slurred. “Where am I?”
“You…you just…” Never mind, he thought. Plenty of time later for questions and answers.
She moved in his arms and even in the dark he could see thick welts and cuts across her breasts and hips. Gently, without jostling her too much, he shrugged out of his jacket and tucked it around her.
“Jack,” she said again, whimpering softly, as her eyes began to close, “what happened?”