Fear Collector

CHAPTER 28

The Morton mansion sat defiantly on the edge of the bluff overlooking Tacoma’s sparkling, but decidedly working-class, Commencement Bay. It was, arguably, the most magnificent setting for any home in the City of Destiny, as Tacoma boosters had nicknamed Seattle’s stepsister to the south. It wasn’t just a large home, but a true mansion with seventeen rooms, including a ballroom. The house had come with a bit of history, too. It had been the site of a famous kidnapping of a doctor’s son in the 1930s-a crime that had never been solved. The home was painted an eggshell white with black shutters and was set off by a circular drive that wound around a fountain that was a replica of some Italianate antiquity that the original owners had sculpted on the spot. Before Palmer Morton bought the place, the home had been a regular on the historic homes tour. The incontrovertible diamond of the tour, patrons of the annual event agreed.

Grace suppressed the urge to roll her eyes when a servant dressed in a uniform of black and white answered the heavy, ten-foot door. Who but a jerk like Palmer Morton would make the help look like they came with the historic home?

“May I help you?” asked the dour man with a shiny pate and razor-thin moustache.

“Yes, I guess you could,” Grace said. “We’re looking for Alex Morton. Is he home?”

The servant studied the detectives, first Grace, then Paul. “I’m Richard Mathias, the butler. What is your business with Alex?”

Grace spoke up. “We’re investigating the disappearance of a friend of his.”

“Ms. Rose?” the man said.

“That would be right. Yes, Emma Rose. Did you know her?”

“I’d seen her a few times. Plus I saw her picture on KING’s news this morning. A lovely girl.”

“May we come in?” Paul asked, asserting himself into the conversation.

“No,” he said, backing off a little. “Floors were just waxed. Besides, no one is home. Just me and the housekeeper.”

Housekeeper, too. Morton has it pretty good, Grace thought. She was lucky to get Shane to spring for a Merry Maid before Thanksgiving the previous year.

“How come you didn’t tell us right away that Alex and Mr. Morton weren’t here?”

“Sorry,” Mathias said. “I made an assumption.”

The remark interested Grace. “What kind of an assumption?”

Mathias rolled his shoulder a little; it was somewhat sheepish gesture done more for the effect of it than for any real feelings he had about offending anyone. “I thought you were collecting for the library or something,” he said.

Grace was annoyed, but didn’t show it.

The butler must be taking asshole lessons from his boss, she thought.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess. When will either Mr. Morton or his son be home?”

He started to close the door. “Next week, I think.”

As the door clicked shut, a voice could be heard. It was clear and unmistakable.

“What did those jokers want?”

It was the voice of a young man. Grace looked at her partner.

“Guess Alex was home after all.”

Paul nodded and Grace rang the bell again.

Mathias answered. “Did you forget something?”

“No, but evidently you did. You forgot that impeding a criminal investigation by lying is a punishable offense.”

The servant looked flustered. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Cut the Mr. Belvedere crap,” Paul said. “We heard the kid. Get him. We want to talk to him.”

“I don’t know… He’s a boy. He’ll need his father’s permission.”

“He’s over eighteen. Get him for us now. We’re trying to find a missing girl. Maybe he can help,” Grace said.

As Mathias appeared to weigh his options, a voice from behind called out.

“I’ll talk to ’em,” a young man’s voice said.

It was Alex Morton, a nineteen-year-old, wearing his slacker uniform-a rumpled T-shirt and khaki shorts that hung so low Grace Alexander almost stared to make sure they weren’t about to fall off in mid stride. He had bushy brows and the kind of fawn eyes that girls couldn’t resist. That he was rich, had a restored Porche Targa, and had the attitude that the world owed him (“It isn’t easy having an old man like mine to live up to.”) probably didn’t hurt him one bit in the dating department.

“Your father will need to be notified,” Mathias said.

“Then, Jesus, Mathias, do your job. That’s why you get paid the big bucks.” There was no trace of irony in his voice.

Grace wondered how it was that a seemingly nice girl like Emma could fall for a boy like Alex. Date him, yes, but anything more? Out of the question. What Richie Rich didn’t know was that he was a conquest as much as any girl.

Alex stepped outside, saving Mathias the quandary of whether or not he should invite the police into the house. Alex lit up a cigarette and offered the light to Paul-not to Grace. While neither detective smoked, it was clear just what Alex Morton thought of women in general. He looked only in Paul’s direction when he spoke.

“Fire away. This is, like, cool to be talking to the police. Lame that you think I know something, but I’m guessing you don’t have anything much to go on.”

“Why is that?” Paul asked.

The teenager shrugged. “Because I don’t know anything and you’re wasting your time here. Girl’s dead, isn’t she?”

Grace bristled at the remark. “Why would you say she’s dead?”

“Is she the good cop or the bad cop?” he asked, ignoring her question.

“She’s a little of both,” Paul said. When the teenager looked over at a small gathering of neighbors, Paul rolled his eyes and mouthed the words Piece of work to Grace.

She mouthed back, Piece of shit.

Paul grinned and looked back over at the oblivious teenager, whose glare at Grace became a full-on glower.

“I barely knew her. We messed around a few times. No biggie,” he said, drawing on his cigarette like it was going to get him high. Really high.

“Her mother said that you were serious until a few weeks ago. Said Emma dumped you and you kind of took it bad,” Grace said, refusing to be ignored by the twerp standing in front of the venerable mansion that would, indeed, be his one day.

“No one is serious at nineteen, lady,” Alex said.

“Detective Alexander, if you don’t mind.”

“Whatever. I dumped her. Big deal. I was tired of her. Too clingy. Wanting too much of my time.”

“That’s interesting,” Grace said. “Let me write that down.” But she didn’t. She just stood there letting her remark soak in along with the fact that she was mocking him with her proclamation that anything he said was worth believing. “Her mother said you Facebook stalked her, called her a hundred times in two days, and sent over ten dozen red roses.”

“That’s bullshit. I did not. I’m done talking with you. That bitch was crazy and so are you.”

“Hey,” Paul said, “that’s enough of that. You mom and dad ever teach you manners?”

“My mom ran off with my dad’s partner and my dad’s an asshole. So I guess not.”

“Where were you last night, say from six p.m. to midnight?”

“Home. Here. With my dad watching the tube. You can ask him. Ask Mathias, too. Don’t treat me like some punk criminal. I’m innocent. I haven’t seen her in weeks. No lie.”

Alex Morton’s words were strange. While it wasn’t a huge leap from the idea that he was a person of interest in the case to punk criminal, it was a sudden one. No one was saying that they wanted him to “come down to the station” to make a statement. Yet Alex Morton was sure posturing like he’d been directly accused. A guilty conscience, maybe? That, naturally, presumed that he had a conscience at all.

“You didn’t send her all those roses?” Grace asked.

“Never,” he said.

She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through some images she’d taken while at the Rose’s. She turned the phone with the screenshot of Emma’s Facebook page before Diana pulled the plug that afternoon. It was photo of bloodred roses, so many it could have been culled from a florist’s website. But it wasn’t. It had clearly been taken in Emma’s bedroom.

She wrote: Creep sent these. Some people have too much money.

“Never saw that. Bitch unfriended me.”

Paul brightened. “Unfriended you? That’s interesting. Wonder why she did that?”

“I’m done talking to you. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Grace didn’t let him leave without a parting shot. She waited for that fleeting bit of eye contact that he afforded her. “Whoever bought that many roses had a lot of money… or his father’s credit card.”

Alex gave her a look, said nothing, and went back inside. It would be hard to say if the gargantuan door slammed or if it always sounded that way.

“He’s a liar,” she said as they walked toward the car. The onlookers, except for one, had quickly dispersed.

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Through and through.”

“We need to track him,” Grace said as a woman started toward them. “Every minute of his day. Did he drive somewhere? Get gas? Was he on a video cam at a Target or something?”

“Dollars to donuts, he wasn’t home,” Paul said in one of his nonsensical retorts.

The woman who rushed over was middle aged. She wore a skirt, boots, and a jacket trimmed in leather. She was a little more Annie Oakley than the neighborhood, but she said she lived across the street.

“I’m Marla Hoffman. I rent the place over there. Are you here about our cats?” Her voice was breathless. “Minnie has been gone for two weeks, Sasha for seven. All of our cats are disappearing around here. I think that Alex boy is doing something to them.”

Grace was caught off guard. “Cats? No, not here about cats. We’re here about a missing girl.” She pulled out Emma’s photo and the woman nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, I know her. Nice girl. Too nice for that kid. I saw him kick a dog and my other neighbor thinks that he’s been taking our cats. God knows why. He’s scary. If I didn’t have a lease on this place I’d get out of here tomorrow.”

It crossed Grace’s mind that she ought to ask how the woman could afford the neighborhood. It wasn’t the kind of address just anyone went to for a rental, that was for sure.

“Do you know when you saw her last?” Paul asked.

Marla thought a moment.

“That’s easy. The day before yesterday.” She glanced at the mansion towering behind the detectives. “In the afternoon. I came home from Pilates and she was standing outside stewing over something. We talked for a minute.”

“What did she say?”

“Typical teen stuff. Mad at someone, I guess, mad at that asshole Morton kid. Excuse my French. She said that she wished people were nicer.”

“Nicer?” Grace asked, her brow slightly raised.

Marla shrugged. “Yeah, nicer. I told her that people start out nice enough, but they shake that off soon enough.”

Paul nodded. He, apparently, agreed.

“We might need to take a statement later,” Grace said. “We’ll need your contact info.”

Marla reached into her purse and pulled out a silver-plated business card case. She worked in IT at Weyerhaeuser in nearby Federal Way. Despite the economy there was still money in IT. Marla probably made more than six figures, judging by her expensive clothes, Pilates class, silver card case. Maybe even platinum. That’s how she could afford the neighborhood.

When the Tacoma detectives got back in the car, Grace spoke first.

“Two lies on the tally sheet for Mr. Morton.”

Paul put the car in gear.

“Yeah, the fact that he hadn’t seen her in a long time,” he said. “The day before yesterday doesn’t qualify as a long time in my book.”

Grace checked her messages, her thoughts still wondering if Alex had any idea how things were shaping up against him. “Not hardly,” she said. “Plus we’ve got him dead to rights on the roses, too.”

They drove down the hill toward the bay, the waters smooth and dark as obsidian.

In the Morton mansion things were decidedly less tranquil. After the two detectives left, Alex Morton flopped on his bed and screamed into his pillow. Next he dialed his father’s cell phone number. No answer.

He’s never there when I need him!

Next, Alex dialed the office number. (“That one’s for losers,” his dad had said. “The people I want to reach me call direct.”) Calla, his father’s secretary for the past six years, answered. She was an attractive brunette with enough smarts to be an officer in the company, but for some reason, she never advanced out of the support function role she’d been hired into. A few speculated as to why, but no one dared to say anything. Her husband was Palmer Morton’s real estate business partner, Byron Jennings.

“I need to talk to my dad,” Alex said, barely hiding his frazzled nerves.

“Alex, he’s in a meeting,” Calla said. “Sorry. I can take a message.”

“I don’t care,” Alex said, his voice rising in anger loud enough that Calla pulled the phone away from her ear a little. “I need to talk to him.”

“He can’t be disturbed,” Calla said, looking through the plate-glass partition into the conference room, where Palmer Morton presided over an enormous architectural model of the mega condo and retail development The Pointe at Ruston Way, in Ruston. It was a crucial development that had the unfortunate distinction of being in the planning stages when the real estate market went kaput. New investors from Korea were in the conference room and Palmer was in the midst of his dog-and-pony show.

“You don’t get it,” Alex said, this time with a tone that was more than a little threatening. “Do you want HR, or better yet your husband, to know that you’ve been boning my dad?”

Calla looked around, swiveled her chair, and faced the window with the view to the choppy waters of the bay. Her back slightly hunched. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Alex, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Calla, you do,” Alex said. “Now go get him. I’m in trouble here and he needs to do some fixing. Get him now or you’ll not only be out of a job, you’ll be looking for a new man. But in your case, you better make that two.”

The call went through to Palmer Morton’s cell phone to a number even Alex didn’t know. Phone records would later show that father and son talked for forty-five seconds before ending the call.

For the first time, Emma Rose noticed a small red light in the corner of the room. It was a pinprick of red, like a taillight of a little airplane far, far away. She slid her body to the edge of the mattress and got up. It was up on the ceiling over the toilet bucket.

What was that red light? What was the creeper up to now? She wondered if maybe it was a smoke detector to keep the so-called apartment safe in the event of a fire. She remembered how those lights were tiny green ones and, to be fair, if the smoke alarm went off there was no place she could run to anyway.

What is it?

She stood on her tiptoes and strained to get a closer look. She tried to swipe at it with her hands, but it was just out of reach. She looked over at the bucket, still full of urine and feces. She knew that the contents of the bucket reeked. She was used to the smell, in the way she thought that a mother must get used to the stink of a baby’s vomit or diaper. Unpleasant, to be sure, but not something so terrible as to kill you.

Not like the creeper.

She looked over and the small red, white tip matchstick caught her eye. She went over, bending down to pick it up. She wished that it was a razor blade or something really useful. Something told her that she should hide it. She tucked the wooden match under the army blanket.

For later.

Next, Emma dumped the contents of the bucket onto the floor and turned it upside down. She climbed atop and strained to get at the little red light. She stood there on the bucket teetering as she finally made out four small letters on a small black box from which the light emerged.

S-O-N-Y.

Sony! She knew what kind of products the Japanese manufacturer of electronics made. Her mom had an old Sony Walkman that she’d finally ditched for an iPod a couple of years ago. Her uncle had a Sony video camera. Emma knew which of those items that had to be… a camera. The creeper had been watching her every move from the minute he held her in the prison cell he referred to as the apartment.