Lizzie
“John Petersen’s name just keeps coming up,” Lizzie said. “All roads lead there.”
“Yeah, true, but that doesn’t mean you should put yourself in danger.” Murphy had pushed her seat all the way back so she could stretch her legs out as Lizzie drove. “This is a stupid idea.”
“You have a better idea?”
“Not really.” They had tried Wyatt Hanson’s apartment. He wasn’t home, and the neighbors hadn’t seen him for the past two days. He’d quit his construction job as well. That left John Petersen as a possible lead.
“So, we do this.” Actually, it would be her doing it, but that was okay. She’d played this kind of game before.
They drove by one of the bars that Murphy’s cop contact said John Petersen liked to frequent. The contact had also provided the make of his truck and the license plate. No sign of his truck. Lizzie pulled the car to the curb and put it in park. “I’ll just run in and double check.” She picked up the photo that they’d printed from a newspaper article and studied the features. She’d know him.
But Murphy already had the door open and had swung her long legs out. “I’ll go.”
“Are you sure? I’d be a little concerned about the kind of bar Petersen might visit.” Austin was a liberal city, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t people who would attack Murphy for being who she was.
“I’m just going to stroll in and stroll out. I know the bartender. It’ll be quick. And dark. I doubt anyone besides the bartender would recognize me. And if they do, they’ll have been drinking, and I haven’t.” Murphy hitched up her sweater to show the gun at her waist. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, but you’re not out in five minutes, I’m coming in after you.”
“Okay, girlfriend.” Murphy’s heels clicked on the sidewalk as she strode into the bar. Three minutes later, she was back. “Nope.”
“Anyone give you trouble?”
“Oh honey, all the time. But not in there. I told you I knew the bartender. Someone tried to rob him once, and I was nearby. Back when I was still a cop.” Murphy buckled her seat belt. “He told me that Petersen hasn’t been in tonight. Fridays he usually goes somewhere else. “
Lizzie punched in the address of the next bar into her phone, which showed it to be five blocks away. Lizzie went in, taking ten minutes to wind through the crowd, fending off offers from five different men to buy her a drink.
The attention reassured her. For what she needed to do, she wanted men to notice her. She hadn’t even tried to pick up a man since she’d left Germany. When she was being logical, which was most of the time, she knew that she hadn’t lost the sex appeal that she’d used so effectively in the past. But she was out of practice. And with certain men, the type of man that John Petersen was, there was a certain look a woman needed to have. Certain clothes.
It was the reason Lizzie and Murphy had stopped at her place so she could shower the horse smell off and change into one of her sexier outfits, tight jeans, a shirt unbuttoned to her bra. Despite her reservations about what Lizzie planned to do, Murphy insisted on helping with the make-up, and Lizzie had to admit that Murphy had done a damn good job on her eyes.
Murphy was behind the wheel when Lizzie returned to the car. “Next?”
“Next.”
They cruised two more bars, alternating who went inside. Two blocks from the last bar on the list, Murphy spotted the truck. Lizzie, who was driving, found a parking spot three blocks farther on. She handed her keys to Murphy.
“I still think this is a terrible idea. There’s every possibility that this man is a killer,” Murphy said.
“That’s the point, isn’t it? Because Isabella Ramirez’s life is in danger. Besides, we need to find out if Petersen is involved in Tom Martin’s murder.”
“Yeah, sure, but not happening if you get killed. Not part of the job.”
“Not planning on dying.”
“Fucking him shouldn’t be part of the job, either.”
“Not planning on that either. But if I have to, I have to. I’ll be fine. It’s just sex.” Lizzie opened the door. “Use Find My Phone to follow me. Don’t be obvious.” She stepped out of the car before Murphy could lob another objection.
John Petersen sat alone at the bar, a dark drink in front of him, eyes roving the crowd. Lizzie knew him from various photographs. Not bad looking, even though he did have that thug feel about him. Not a bad body.
If she did have to fuck him, that would make it tolerable. Not that she intended to do so, but she was prepared if necessary. She’d fucked men she despised on plenty of other occasions.
A quick check. Phone sound off. Shirt open. Hair loose.
She slid back into the role of predator—as if she’d never left it behind. Only this time she was after information. She wasn’t planning to kill.
She sauntered to a bar stool two down from Petersen and seated herself. The bartender wiped down the counter in front of her. “What’ll you have, pretty lady?”
The condescension galled, but it was Texas after all. If she went after every male in Texas who offered a condescending remark, she’d never have time for anything else.
She ordered a light beer. He brought it and a small bowl of peanuts. She offered her credit card, but he shook his head.
“Paid for.”
“By who?” She managed a surprised tone.
The bartender indicated, and she turned her head. Petersen was smiling at her. This was going to be easy. She raised her glass in a salute. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
The trick was to keep him drinking but not to drink too much herself. Staying with beers was a good option, if he didn’t notice that she was toying with one beer for an hour.
But he did. He finished his drink and ordered another, buying her a beer with a shot of Jameson. He was drinking Black Russians, which surprised her a little. “You seem like a party kind of girl. You need something to go with that beer.”
He raised his glass and waited for her to raise hers. She hesitated and then followed his lead, tossing down the drink.
“Another.” He called the bartender over.
Damn. She wanted him drunk, but she needed her wits about her. She’d eaten a sandwich before she and Murphy had started the hunt, but while the food would slow how quickly the alcohol entered her bloodstream, it would only do so much.
She realized that he was trying to get her drunk just as she was trying to get him drunk. Same tactic, different goals.
The new round of drinks appeared.
He picked up his. On an impulse, she leaned in to kiss him. It turned into a long and deep kiss, and she knocked her shot glass over with her free hand as her tongue explored his.
Then she pushed him off. “I need to use the ladies.”
“Don’t be too long. Maddy, right?”
“Yeah, Maddy.” She’d picked a name at random. “And you’re John.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She motioned to the bartender. “Another round.” She smiled at him. “Don’t wait for me.”
In the bathroom, she checked her makeup and considered calling Murphy. But what would she say? That she was worried she might drink too much to do what she needed to do? No. Murphy would just tell her to bail. She wanted—needed—to see what was on his phone and his computer, and to do that, she needed to get into his home. And she needed him to sleep.
If she could get him drunk enough once she got him to his house, he might fall asleep without her having sex with him.
You’ve done this before. She spoke out loud to her reflection. And she had.
She gave him fifteen minutes to finish the round that she’d ordered, and then with a glance at herself in the mirror, headed back out.
“Took long enough. What were you doing?” His expression was curious but not hostile.
“You know women always take a lot longer in the bathroom. And then I got a call from a girlfriend.”
“About what?”
“A guy who dumped her. She needed someone to cry on.” She looked at the glasses on the counter. Hers was full, but his was empty. That was something. “How about we get out of here?”
“Sounds good to me.”
He was drunk enough that she offered to drive, but he waved off the suggestion. Of course, a guy like him wouldn’t allow the woman to drive. Nor would he admit that he needed help.
Ironic that the greatest danger from the evening was probably driving with a drunk.
But there was little traffic, and he was either not as drunk as she thought or just lucky, but he managed to drive to his small ranch house in the Windsor Hills neighborhood without so much as a dented bumper.
He draped an arm around her waist and holding her, unlocked the front door. “Home sweet home.” The house was neat, but with old furniture and old decorations. From the look of it, the house had been decorated in the 1970s. White and green patterned wallpaper. A low orange couch in front of an even lower coffee table intended to service both the couch and people sitting on the floor. The television was more recent, flat screen at least sixty inches, but it sat on top of what had been an entertainment center with a built-in tube television.
Most of the pictures on the wall were of old Austin, but the ensemble was complete with a picture of Richard Nixon.
She was barely inside the house when he was on her, mouth covering hers, one hand groping her breasts, the other sliding between her legs. She kissed him back. Then she pulled away.
“What do you have to drink?”
“After.” He wasn’t as drunk as she’d hoped. “After I show you what a real Texas man can do for a woman.” He grabbed her and pulled her to him again, tongue probing inside her mouth.
The hell with it. She was good at sex, and she liked sex. She’d had sex for years with a man she’d hated and eventually helped kill. Sex with a man she loathed had still been a pleasurable sensation.
Maybe she was a sociopath, too.
Just do it.
She followed him into his bedroom, where he stripped off her clothes and then his own.
She pulled him down onto the bed, wrapping her legs around him. He was drunk enough that he had a little trouble starting, but she knew how to coax out a performance. She closed her eyes, feeling the pulsing of his rhythm, envisioning a different face and body entwined with hers, and she let herself go, crying out as she finished with him. He collapsed on the bed next to her.
“Damn, woman. That was good.”
It hadn’t been bad. Much too long a time since she’d had sex. She needed to do this more often. No strings. No attachment. Just pure sex. Not that John Petersen was her choice of a partner, although having sex with someone she knew was dangerous did make the experience more intense.
“I’d like that drink now.”
“Cabinet in the living room. I’m partial to Kahlua and vodka.” He was relaxed, but not asleep yet.
Naked, she padded out and located the liquor cabinet. Vodka and Kahlua. Perfect. She stopped by the kitchen for glasses and ice, filled his glass to two thirds with vodka, the rest of the way with Kahlua, filled hers almost to the top with water and added a splash of vodka. She carried the two glasses and the bottles of vodka and Kahlua back to the bedroom.
On the bed, Petersen lay waiting for her, arm under his head. She handed him his drink, and he drained the glass.
“You have a thing for the 1970s?” she asked.
“My parents’ house. They bought the place in ’72. Never updated it.” His voice was slurring more. With any luck, he’d be out soon. “And I don’t care about getting new stuff. Except for the television.”
“The 70s are cool again.”
“They shouldn’t be. It all started then. Maybe ten years earlier. Everything we have to fight now. The degeneracy.”
“Before my time.” She pushed her blonde hair out of her face.
“Yeah, what’re you? Twenty?”
“Close enough.” She was twenty-six.
She mixed him a new Black Russian. Then she pretended to top off her own glass. Earlier in the evening, he might have noticed. At this point, he didn’t.
“How about another round?” He put his hand on her thigh.
“I’m game. But I need to use the bathroom first.” She set her glass on the side table. By the time she returned to the bed, he was asleep on his back, mouth open, snoring. Good. Once was tolerable—but it was enough.
She returned the glasses and the bottles to the kitchen, washing and rinsing every surface, out of habit rather than real need, trained not to leave her fingerprints or DNA behind. Then she used his shower to rinse off and clear her head.
Back in the bedroom, Petersen was still snoring. She dressed quietly and began her search, picking up his phone from the bedstand and pressing his thumb against the screen to unlock it.
He moved, muttering something that she couldn’t understand, and she froze. Then he turned on his side and began snoring again.
She scrolled down the texts. Meeting reminders. Scam texts. She found a text from Wyatt Hanson from several months earlier, suggesting that they get together. It was something, and it did indicate that Petersen knew the ex-husband of Isabella Ramirez. She took a picture of the text with her own phone.
She checked Google Maps for information on recent trips, but there was nothing. If he’d been involved in Isabella’s kidnapping, he hadn’t used his phone for directions to drive her to wherever she was being held.
She called his phone with hers so she’d have Petersen’s number and then deleted her number from his call list.
She considered connecting to the Find My Phone feature of his phone, but that would be easy for him to detect. After wiping down the cell, she returned the phone to the bedstand. Petersen snorted loudly, half waking, and she froze. Then he turned on his side and snored again.
She stole out of the bedroom. Rummaging through the living room and the kitchen, she discovered that he didn’t cook much. A lot of canned meats and pastas. Peanut butter. Corn flakes. Packaged donuts. How did he stay so slim? Evil must burn a lot of calories.
She checked the other bedrooms. One was for guests, and the other for storage of clothes. Nothing remotely interesting.
Where did he keep his computer? He had to have one.
She returned to the kitchen to check a door she’d noticed earlier. It opened to stairs, covered with a threadbare blue carpet, leading down to what looked like a red tile floor. A basement was a good place for a home office. On the other hand, if he woke up, she’d be trapped. She’d been trapped in a cellar once, and the memory wasn’t pleasant. On the third hand—was there a third hand?—Murphy outside, waiting, could rescue her if need be.
She listened to Petersen’s snores and decided to take the chance.
Going down the stairs was unnerving, but she’d guessed correctly. Once down, she found a laptop on a card table next to a filing cabinet. The rest of the basement décor—wood-paneled walls, dartboard, wooden bar with red bar stools—reflected the taste, or lack thereof, from fifty years earlier.
She seated herself on a hard wooden chair and opened the laptop. The screen lit up and requested the password. She stared at the screen and then called Murphy.
“Where’s Petersen?” Murphy asked.
“In bed. Drunk and asleep. Any idea what password he might have used?”
“No clue. Don’t try guessing. If you guess wrong three times, it’ll lock up on you. He’ll know you were snooping. Did you find anything of use?”
“Isabella’s ex-husband Wyatt was in touch with Petersen. I got his phone number.”
“That’s a start. Now get out of there before he wakes up. I’m parked outside.”
It was probably the sensible thing to do, but Lizzie hadn’t found much in exchange for the nastiness of sex with Petersen. “I’m here. I’m going to at least give the computer a try. Then there’s the filing cabinet. Maybe he has something interesting in there. “
“What did I say about him being a killer?”
“I hear you. Ten minutes. More or less.”
“Ten minutes and I don’t hear from you, I’m coming in.”
Lizzie clicked off and turned to the filing cabinet. The top drawer held tax returns, financial documents, and bills. She checked his W-2s. Apparently, Combatants for the Unborn paid him a salary. Not huge, maybe fifty thousand a year. The bank statements, though, reflected more money coming in. A lot more money. Maybe another five thousand a month. Not enough at one time to trigger scrutiny by the bank, but still a fair amount of money.
She looked for copies of checks or anything that might indicate the source of the money.
Nothing.
The middle drawer was filled with articles and mailings related to the fight to abolish abortion. She skimmed through the files of newspaper articles, noting that some of the articles described the bombing of clinics, and then pulled out a thick folder labeled “Combatants for the Unborn.”
The folder held letters and notes on the group’s activities. She flipped through older documents, finally finding a print-out of a draft of a bill to be enacted by the legislature. She skimmed it quickly. The bill would end any exemption for abortion, even if the mother’s life were at risk.
“Son of a bitch.” Lizzie snapped a picture and then continued to search. In the third drawer from the top, she found prints of photographs. From the clothes and the hair, she guessed they were from maybe twenty years earlier.
A young Petersen with an equally young woman. It took a minute for her to recognize Brenda Phillips. The young Brenda had a much different look than her older self.
So Petersen had had a thing with Brenda Phillips? Was it possible that Petersen still had romantic feelings towards her?
Was it possible that he used her name to open his computer?
She returned to the computer and typed Brenda Phillips into the password.
The computer shook off the guess.
But Brenda’s last name wouldn’t have been Phillips when those pictures were taken. Lizzie crossed the room to a bookshelf and began to skim. Near the top, she found a yearbook from 2001.
As she removed it from the shelf, she thought she heard a noise from upstairs. She froze and listened intently. Whatever the noise was didn’t repeat. Had she imagined it? Silently she padded to the bottom of the stairs and listened.
She heard the faint sound of snoring and relaxed.
Her phone buzzed. Ten minutes are up. I’m coming in.
No, everything’s fine. Wait.
Then she returned to the yearbook and skimmed through class pictures. There were two Brendas, but it was easy to figure out who was who. The girl who would become Brenda Phillips looked remarkably like the picture of the young woman that Petersen had kept in his file drawer. Brenda Addams. Addams? She remembered watching reruns of The Addams Family television show when she first came to America, and she repressed a laugh.
Also in the yearbook: a picture of Wyatt Hanson. She pulled out her phone and snapped a shot. Then she skimmed through the pictures of the senior class in the book. There were two more of Brenda, and in both, she was with John Petersen.
She turned to the front page and the signatures from Petersen’s classmates. There were maybe thirty scrawled signatures with jokes and wishes for the future. It took her a few minutes to find it. It was on the picture of the football team, where John Petersen had played end. Yours forever Brenda.
Forever hadn’t lasted long, had it? But it was a high school romance. How many did last? And how many people continued to pine for their first love? Petersen hadn’t seemed like the pining type, but then, she didn’t know him well.
She typed the name into the computer. Brenda Addams.
And she was in.
She checked his history first, which had nothing of use, and then moved to his emails. From Georgina Crane: Have you asked her yet? We need her to help with the bill. His reply was a simple: Seeing her tomorrow.
She scrolled down to another Georgina Crane email and confirmed that the help wanted was from Brenda Phillips, on a bill to eliminate any exceptions to abortion even to save the life of the mother.
One email interested her. He’d written a thank you to Georgina. As always, thank you for your support. In every way.
So was Georgina helping to fund Petersen even beyond the salary he collected from Combatants for the Unborn? It seemed so.
She searched for emails to or from Brenda. She found emails setting up meetings but no sign of a continuing involvement beyond the common devotion to the cause of depriving women of their reproductive choices.
But the fact that he’d used Brenda’s name as a password told Lizzie enough.
So what had she learned? Petersen’s life was being financed by Georgina, and he had a thing for Brenda. Nothing to indicate either woman knew about or had helped with the abduction of Isabella Ramirez, but everything to indicate that Petersen would go to one or both if he needed help.
More noise from upstairs. A thudding sound.
Damn. Damn.
She should have left already.
Lizzie flipped off the basement overhead lights and sat in the dark, barely breathing. Another thud.
She couldn’t just sit there. If Petersen was awake, he would come looking for her. If he found her in his office, he would realize that she wasn’t just a casual hookup. And he was a killer if Murphy were right, and Murphy usually was.
She had to get out.
There was only one way out of the basement, and she had to take it. Now. Before he found her.
She used the flashlight on her phone to find the stairs and climbed, the tattered rug muffling her footsteps. Reaching the top, she listened at the door. Footsteps, not steady and not close. Maybe the hall? Sound of a stumble and a loud curse.
Maybe he was just going to the bathroom.
She closed her eyes to visualize the kitchen. There was a back door to a small fenced in yard. If her memory was correct, it was less than five feet from the door to the basement. All she had to do was crack the basement door open and then get out the back door.
No sound of him in the kitchen.
She slid out the basement door into the dark of the kitchen, feeling the tightness of fear. But the kitchen was empty and dark. In five steps, she was at the back door, and then through it.