The Bone Chamber

6

Sydney called the D.C. police department from the car. Amber Jacobsen, the records supervisor, was a cultivated contact from Syd’s days working in the capital, cultivated because Amber’s finger was on the pulse of what was going on in that town, and it always paid to have a friendly face when it came to dealing with the local law enforcement. Sydney had always been careful to reciprocate any favors.

“MPDC, Records, Jacobsen speaking.”

“Hey, girl. It’s Fitz.”

“To what do I owe the honor?”

“I was hoping you might be able to clue me in on any unsolved Jane Does in your area?”

“Not a one that I know of, why?”

“Just handled a forensic sketch, and was curious if the victim came out of your area. It was pretty brutal,” she said, and left it at that, since the case was CIA’s and she had no idea what was going on with it. She’d already had one friend killed, she didn’t need another. “Might have occurred at the Smithsonian or nearby.”

“Now that I would’ve heard about. I’ll double check with Dennis, but believe it or not, for D.C., we’ve been pretty quiet. Well, up until the bank robbery today. Nothing but the usual, and a couple gang killings the past few weeks. Since they’re only killing each other, not even the reporters are getting excited. Hey, that’s my other line,” she added, the phone ringing in the background. “I’ll call you if I hear anything on any Jane Doe murders.”

“Thanks.”

By the time Sydney arrived at the Smithsonian castle parking lot, doubts had hit her about this being the location. The color of the building was right, but surely there would’ve been some sort of rumor. All doubts fled the moment she saw the building up close. The large blocks of stone looked very much like what she’d seen in the crime scene photo.

She carried two sketches in her soft-sided briefcase, one of the woman’s face, the other of what she recalled from the crime scene. It was this one she looked at, trying to get a feel for its location on the property, and she walked around, stopped only once by a security guard who suddenly appeared through a side door from the building. The grounds were undoubtedly monitored, and she was off the beaten path.

The guard was a good six inches taller than her five-nine frame. His uniform shirt was strained at the buttons and at the pants’ pockets, as though he’d gained considerable weight since he’d purchased the uniform. His smile was guarded as he looked her over. “May I help you?” He had a slight accent, something Eastern European.

She pulled her credentials from her briefcase, held them open for him. “I’m looking into a report that a woman might have been assaulted here, possibly even murdered.”

He tucked his thumbs in his belt, shaking his head. “If there was any crime on these grounds, we’d be notified, especially something that serious.”

“Nothing in the past few days? Weeks…? Months?” she added when she received no reaction.

“I’ve only worked here a few weeks. If anything happened before that, I have no idea.”

“Mind if I have a look around?”

“You have a card? I’ll call my superior, let him know.”

She handed him one from her briefcase, then pulled out the sketch of the Jane Doe. “Do you recall ever seeing this woman around here?”

He eyed the sketch, his gaze narrowing as he shook his head. “With so many tourists, it’s hard to say. Would you like me to make a copy and ask around?”

“No, thank you.”

He held up her card. “But if I think of something, I’ll call you.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

He left and she continued her perusal, definitely at a loss. This appeared to be the crime scene she’d seen in the photo, but if so, it told her little. She stood there, eyeing the lamppost, the red sandstone on the building, but there was nothing that stood out, and she thought of the photo she’d seen in Quantico. She was no homicide detective, though she’d assisted on several serial murders during her few short years with the FBI, and the occasional murder while an officer with Sacramento PD before that. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t made the connection to what she hadn’t seen in the photo. Blood.

It had been there on what was left of the woman’s face, to be sure, but head wounds are known to bleed profusely, and the removal of a face from a body was bound to leave some blood evidence, if not massive amounts of blood evidence.

Which meant the woman had been killed elsewhere.

Sydney walked around a bit, finally ending up at the front of the building, with the distinct feeling that someone was watching her. She looked up, saw a tall, dark-haired priest eyeing her, a look of curiosity on his face, perhaps because she was coming from an area where the tourists didn’t usually venture. He was standing next to a group of people who were waiting at the entrance to the front of the very building Sydney had been searching around. She glanced at a sign, saw it was a display on the Holy Crusade, which no doubt explained the priest’s presence, and when she saw nothing else out of the ordinary, she returned to the parking lot. Okay, think. What would the homicide guys do if they were investigating a Jane Doe murder? Two things, she thought, both of which might help identify the victim. Missing persons’ reports and towed abandoned vehicles. If someone was missing or dead, she could very well have left a car somewhere, a car that was towed because she failed to return for it. And that could give her a good starting break.

Syd pulled out her cell phone, called Amber Jacobsen at MPDC Records. “You have time to do one other favor for me?”

“Depends. I get off in thirty. My favorite band is playing tonight. Scars on Broadway.”

“Hoping this won’t take too long. I need info on towed abandoned vehicles in the downtown area.”

“Time frame?”

“Last couple weeks, up until now. And if you can tie one of them to a missing person’s case, preferably a woman, that’s even better.”

“Piece of cake. When do you need it?”

“I’m on my way to the PD now.”

“I’ll have the listing for you when you get here.”

“Thanks,” she said, then looked up, surprised to see the security guard was standing just a few feet behind her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt your call. There’s another guard who may have heard something a few nights ago. I thought you might like to come back, perhaps to speak with him.”

“Heard what?” she said, standing there, her hand on the car door.

“A man arguing with a woman. A lovers’ quarrel.”

“Did he say what night this was?”

“Three nights ago, I think. He’s tied up at the monitors, and said to come inside to the office and he’ll go over the details with you. He thinks it could be what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks,” she said, then tossed her briefcase into the front seat, not wanting to sound too ungrateful, since he had gone to the trouble to check for her. “Unfortunately, I have an appointment. If you could give him my card and have him call me, I’d appreciate it.” And she slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, then drove off, catching sight of the security guard in her rearview mirror. She dismissed the information he’d given her, not worried about this lovers’ quarrel thing, especially if it occurred that recently.

There had been snow on the ground three nights ago, and in the crime scene photo, there was no snow, which meant the murder had occurred sometime before that.

About twenty minutes later, she was walking up the front steps of the Henry J. Daly building of the Metropolitan Police Department. Amber was waiting for her at Records. Petite, she stood about five and a half feet tall, brown hair, blue-green eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her pretty face. She smiled as she held up two stacks of printouts.

“I’m assuming,” Amber said, “that you didn’t care about any of the normal tows, drunk driving, that sort of thing. Only the unoccupied tows?”

“Good guess.”

She tapped the closest stack. “These are tows that were claimed by the registered owners. And these,” she said, tapping the second stack, “are for tows that the ROs didn’t claim. Not as many, but if you’re dealing with a dead registered owner, might explain why they didn’t claim their cars?”

“Certainly one explanation.” Sydney took the first stack, looking them over. “Don’t suppose any of them are actually linked to a missing person?”

“One actually, but to a man, and I thought you were interested in missing women.”

“At this point, I’ll take anything suspicious.”

Amber dug the report off the bottom of the first stack. “Originally it was entered as stolen. I remember it, because the girl came in and gave some convoluted story about people following her boyfriend. One of those truly paranoid types, government plots, tinfoil, the works, but the real story was that she was pissed off because her boyfriend borrowed the car, and he hasn’t been seen since. She reported it stolen, but it had really been towed. Boyfriend’s still missing, though. As whacked as she was, I’d hazard a bet he took off on purpose.”

“Probably nothing, but I’ll check it out.”

“This one, however,” Amber said, removing another report, “was towed a few days ago not two blocks from the Smithsonian. Figured since you were asking about that particular locale, it might fit.”

Syd eyed the car’s description, a Ford Tempo, then the registered owner, a young woman who lived about ten minutes from the Smithsonian. She thanked Amber, took the reports, and after a quick stop at the ladies’ room, headed there first.

A dead end. The car was towed due to “No Parking” signs erected for some road construction, something the owner hadn’t caught because she had been out of town on a business trip. The next several on Syd’s list were similar, and the owners present and accounted for. It was dark out now, and she was getting hungry. She looked at the other registered owners, eyeing the tow sheet from the so-called whack job Amber had told her about, a young woman named Penny Dearborn.

Everything about the tow was wrong. From the location, the farthest from the Smithsonian in comparison to all the other cases, and an ex-boyfriend missing, when Syd needed a woman missing. What it did have going for it was that it was somewhat closer to Scotty’s apartment, which meant she could swing by, talk to the woman, then wait for Scotty to get back, since she was starved and had no intention of eating peanut butter for dinner.

Penny Dearborn’s apartment was dark, at least the upstairs windows. The two downstairs windows were boarded over, and she wondered if anyone still lived there. Sydney parked Scotty’s Jeep about two doors down, then walked up the well-lit street. She kept to one side of the front door, knocked, and looked up at the darkened window upstairs. A few moments later, Sydney heard what sounded like footsteps descending an interior staircase, and then the door opened, revealing a tall, thin blond woman with a gaunt face.

Sydney held open her credentials. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick, FBI. Are you Penny Dearborn?”

The woman glanced up and down the street before looking at Sydney, then nodding. “Yeah, why?”

“I have a few questions about your car being towed, and the missing person’s report on your boyfriend, Xavier Caldwell.”

Penny gave a cynical smile. “Not so paranoid, am I?”

Syd figured that remained to be seen. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Again the woman gave that look up and down the street, then stepped aside allowing Sydney to enter. The room reminded Sydney of her own place, filled with boxes stacked around the walls, some taped shut, others still open, filled with books, newspaper-wrapped items, and other possessions tossed in with less care.

“You’re moving?”

“Tomorrow. Which isn’t soon enough. I haven’t had electricity in two weeks, and I’ve been broken into twice in the last week, never mind the drive-by shootings from the gang war. Used to be a nice neighborhood. But I have to draw the line when bullets start flying through my living room window,” she said, nodding toward the boarded-up windows on either side of the TV. “Goddamned landlord says he’s deducting it from my deposit. Bastard.”

“I’m hoping this won’t take but a couple of minutes.”

“Mind if we talk upstairs. I’m a bit paranoid these days…”

“Upstairs is fine.” Sydney followed her into a bedroom, unlit, except by the glow from a streetlamp outside. Like the downstairs, this room was filled with boxes stacked around the perimeter of the double bed in the center of the room.

The woman sat on the bed, and Sydney stood near the dresser next to the window that looked out over the street below. “I understand you made a missing person’s report on your boyfriend?”

“Not sure why I bothered. I should’ve figured out what he was up to, ever since he hooked up with Miss Hoity-Toity.”

Sydney had the sinking feeling that this was nothing of any consequence. Spurned lover. “What happened?” she asked, more as a way to urge the girl to get on with the story so Sydney could get out of there.

“Happened? Xavier hooks up with this girl from his religion class or political history, or whatever it was, and wants to borrow my car. They’re going to go talk to someone about a conspiracy theory,” she said in a voice that told Sydney that the only conspiring was that which was taking place in the backseat of said car. “I used to think he was so profound. We’d sit and talk for hours over coffee about how every country’s governments were all working to keep the people in the dark, how everything from 9/11 to the Catholic Church was all part of some big conspiracy, just like the conflicts in the Mideast. And then he met her. They were in the same class.” She looked away, wiped a couple tears from her face with the back of her hand. “And she said she had proof on the back of a dollar bill that it was all being run by shadow governments and the Freemasons.”

There were a lot of nuts out there thinking that Freemasons were taking over the world, and the proof was on the back of the dollar bill. Amber undoubtedly had the right of it about this particular case, when she’d put together the reports for Sydney. Whacked. Even so, Syd was sympathetic. The woman had lost her lover to someone who told a better story. “Proof?” Sydney asked. “On the dollar bill?”

“Yeah. Like the eye on the pyramid. And the Star of David that points to the word MASON. He just got all into it. Found his kindred spirit, he says. Hope you don’t mind, but it’s fate, he says. Fate that he forgets to give me his half of the rent money, and the utility bill. I have no power, no phone, and I got evicted when I couldn’t come up with the rent. And then maybe two weeks ago, he calls up and says they’re in trouble. That they want to borrow my car again, because he’s got to get to the airport, and he thinks they’ve been following him and her both.”

“Who was following them?”

“He didn’t say.”

“This girl, she have a name?”

“Hell if I know. I never actually met her. She was an assistant to some professor in Xavier’s history or archeology class at UVA.”

“You know the professor’s name?”

“Woods, I think. Anyway, Xavier started meeting her for coffee, just like he used to take me. Only with her, he became twice as paranoid. He actually believed this crap.” She sat down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I know it’s stupid, and I even used to agree with him, but once he met her, all that stuff he spouted just sounded…annoying. Like a cop-out. Everything that went wrong in his life, he blamed on the government. The fact we got evicted from this apartment? Government plot. His checks kept bouncing, because his deposit was lost? Government plot. All of it proved his point that they were going to take over world banking. At one point he had tinfoil on every window and wouldn’t talk without the water running. He let them turn off the phones, because they were tapped. I swear he had escape routes planned,” she said, sweeping her hand around the room to point up into the closet, now emptied. “The attic, the bathroom. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s one thing to rail against the government over coffee, but at some point you still have to pay your rent.”

She shrugged, tried to smile, and added, “So I kicked his ass out, got the landlord to give me an extra two weeks to get the rent money together, and what good did that do? Nothing, because I had to use my rent money to get my car out of hock, because that son of a bitch sweet-talked me into borrowing it, then left it parked in a construction zone after he ran off with his new girlfriend. It got towed.”

Syd was tempted to tell the woman she was better off without the guy and was almost glad when her cell phone vibrated. Whatever Penny and her boyfriend were about, it wasn’t related to her case. “Excuse me,” she said, when she saw it was Scotty.

“You ready for dinner?” he asked. “I thought we could meet at King Yen’s.”

“Can I call you back in a few?” she said, moving away toward the window for a bit of privacy.

“I’ve already made the reservations.”

He’d proposed to her there and, no doubt, had chosen that spot for tonight in hopes that they could discuss their relationship. Her fault, she supposed, for not squelching the dinner thing. That didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, give him any ideas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

She disconnected, was just tucking her phone on her belt when she noticed a man in a long overcoat looking into the window of Scotty’s Jeep parked just down the street. “You get a lot of car thefts in this area?” she asked Penny.

“Don’t even get me started on this crappy neighborhood.”

The man straightened, started walking up the sidewalk. He was white, clean-shaven, too healthy-looking to match the profile of some dirtbag hoping to smash a car window for a stereo. Even so, Sydney kept her eye on him, then noticed a second man across the street, also in an overcoat, paralleling the first man. The second man started across the street, and she noticed a vertical ridge running down the length of his coat. A ridge about the length of a long barrel of an assault weapon hidden beneath. The momentary thought that these were the missing bank robbers fled when she realized Scotty would not have called her for dinner if the robbers were still out there.

Her gaze flew to the man on this side of the street. The one walking toward Penny Dearborn’s front door.

Syd glanced at Penny. “Where’s your phone?”

“Downstairs. But it was shut off.”

Every telephone in the U.S. was supposed to have 911 access, even if it was shut off for nonpayment, and 911 access meant instant address relayed to the cops, far superior to using a cell phone. “Please tell me you have a phone up here?” she asked, looking around.

“Packed,” she said, pointing at all the boxes. “Somewhere.”

Syd drew her weapon, stepped back from the window, then pulled out her cell phone. “This paranoid boyfriend of yours,” she said to Penny. “He happen to show you any of these escape routes?”