pages 8 and 9

For the second time in two minutes flat, Alex had to try hard to focus on Cole through the numbness in his brain. Shaking his head, he let out an oath under his breath and, with a slightly steadier hand, punched in Eve’s cell number.

***************

Eve heard a faint noise coming through the heavy door and shook herself from a trancelike reverie. She cocked her head to listen and rushed to press her ear to the door to confirm that there really was a noise, it wasn’t just in her head. She started taking shallow, quiet breaths and listened hard. The sound came again and her heart leapt. Never had the annoying Nokia phone tune her cell phone played sounded so wonderful. Then reality intruded and Eve realized the futility of knowing where her cell phone was, but being unable to reach it.
Before she could stop herself, she was banging her fists against the door and shouting at the top of her lungs. She suddenly felt claustrophobic, like she couldn’t get enough air. She knew that no one was there to hear her demands to be released, let alone her pleas for help. She’d heard her captor leave hours before.
Eve yelled until she was hoarse, long after her phone had stopped wringing.

*****************

Alex burst through the door and broke into a brisk jog as his anxiety escalated. He couldn’t keep himself from picturing Angie lying there on the floor. The red everywhere. Only now he kept seeing Eve’s face. Eve holding her throat as the life seeped out from between her fingers and her eyes glazed slowly over; one moment seeming to plead for help and the next as cold and lifeless as marbles.
Alex and Cole ran through the building and checked with homicide to make sure Eve wasn’t actually in the building. No one had heard from her for at least two days. Alex sent Cole to grab the equipment he would need to record a call in case the creep called back. Meanwhile, he swung by Vice to grab his car keys and notebook. Alex was alternately praying his cell phone would ring and hoping it wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure which would be worse: being forced to endure the impossible hope of not knowing whether she was alive or dead, or knowing for sure and having to face the world without her in it.
In five minutes Cole and Alex were just heading out the door, when they ran into Callahan coming back from a late lunch.
As they blew by him, Callahan called, “Where are you two going?”
Alex kept walking, but Cole grabbed his arm to stop him.
“What are you doing? We have to go!” Alex whispered urgently as pictures of Angie and Eve chased one another through his head.
“You’re not thinking with your head, Alex. What’s the first thing you do when you find out another police officer is in immediate danger?” Cole asked.
“Help them.”
“Okay, what if you don’t know the exact circumstances and you can’t help them directly and efficiently? Huh?…You call for backup. You use the resources you have available to you. If we want to help Eve, we need to get Callahan updated on the situation. If we go off halfcocked it will only take longer to figure out where Eve is and help her.”
Alex blinked as Cole’s words intruded on the images in his mind. “Yes. You’re right,” he agreed.
Turning they quickly approached the captain who had already started towards them.
“What exactly is going on here?” he demanded.
Alex was grateful when Cole took the lead with the captain. At the moment he wasn’t sure he could accurately put words together to describe the situation. His mind had stalled out back in the locker room and he’d been running on autopilot ever since. “Did you make her laugh, Alex?…I’ve been watching her…she doesn’t laugh anymore…I used to whisper…She doesn’t even see me.” Parts of his conversation with the caller kept flooding into his mind until he felt like he was drowning.
Alex followed blindly as Cole and Callahan turned and hurried back into the station. When they were in Callahan’s office he began to interrogate Alex.
“Who called you; a man or a woman?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, blinking back to awareness.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Callahan raged.
Callahan’s anger finally did what Cole’s urgency had not and jerked Alex’s system out of the shock it had been fighting ever since he got the phone call. “I couldn’t tell because they were using a voice changer. I think it was a man, though, from the way he spoke. He said he’s been watching Eve,” his voice trailed off.
“Did he say that he had Eve?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say whether or not she was alive?”
“No. He said he had something I wanted.”
“Did he want ransom?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything about money.”
“Did it sound like she knew him?”
“Yes. At least, he knew her.”
“Did he say anything that would indicate where he was keeping her?”
“No.”
“You said he said that he had something you wanted. Do you think he’s someone you know?”
“I don’t think so. He said…he said that I wasn’t as smart as my reputation had led him to believe. Here.” Alex dug into his bag and pulled out his transcript of the conversation. “I wrote down the number he was calling from and most of the conversation. You should have someone go over it. Should we try calling the number or tracking it through the phone company? I mean, if we call it do you think it’ll scare him and he’d move her?” Alex was suddenly anxious as his mind explored this new avenue of investigation, which should have occurred to him as soon as he hung up the phone.
“No. Don’t call it, we’ll have someone get to work on tracing it right away. Meanwhile, you should go over to her apartment and try to talk to anyone who may have seen her recently. We need to know where she was when he took her. Alex, do you think you can be objective?”
Alex just stared at him for a pregnant moment. When he found his voice, he started to speak. “If you think for one minute that you’re going to get me off this case, then yo—“
The Chief interrupted him, “For the moment I think you should work this case even though it isn’t your department, you have an inside connection. You’re the one he called. Cole, you can be his partner so we don’t have to debrief –“
Callahan was interrupted when Alex’s phone rang. Alex fished it out of his pocket and all three men stared at it in stunned silence for a moment. Then, hesitantly, Alex brought it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi. This is Archie Wilder. Is this Alex?”
“Yes this is Officer Alex Watson. Do I know you, Mr. Wilder?
“No, I work at Cub Foods. Well, not always, at night I’m the doorman for the Sunrise Apartment Complexes downtown.”
Alex’s mind was racing. Sunrise Apartment Complexes. An image flashed into his mind and he could see the huge Sunrise Apartment Complexes for sale ad on Eve’s apartment building.
“What can I do for you Mr. Wilder?”
“Call me Archie. I’m calling because, well, I was worried about Eve. You know Eve, right?”
“Yes,” was all Alex could manage. Angie. Eve. Angie. Eve. Eve. Eve. Alex closed his eyes, trying to block out the images.
“Well, I was worried about her and I…I won’t get in trouble for this, will I?”
“No, Archie.”
“I used my master key and went into her apartment. Just to check and make sure she wasn’t hurt in there or anything, you understand. She wasn’t in there, and it didn’t look like she’s been there for a few days. Some of her stuff was missing. The message light on her machine was blinking, and I was just curious, so I…I listened to the messages. Yours said to call and it sounded real important so I thought you should know that she’s gone. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Maybe, two or three days ago. She stopped by to get some stuff. I don’t think she’s been living at the apartment for three or four weeks, though.”
“Okay Archie, thanks for your help. Keep an eye out and we’ll be in touch with you. What number can I reach you at?”
Alex wrote down the three numbers Archie rattled off. And which times Archie would be where.
“Hey, Alex, um, do you think she’s okay?”
“I don’t know.” Alex said and hung up.

* * * * * * * * * *
The rest of the day passed in one long blur. Now that they knew that Eve was really missing, they needed to figure out where and when she’d been taken. This was complicated because they didn’t know where she’d been staying, if not at her apartment. The cleared out a conference room to be used as their base of operations and started a flow chart on a large dry-erase board. Alex sat down with Eve’s Rolodex and started to make calls, trying to figure out where she’s go if she left her apartment. Meanwhile, Cole started to canvass the station, trying to figure out who had talked to her last as well as what might have made her want to move out of her apartment.
At seven o’clock Alex still hadn’t gotten anywhere in determining her temporary residence. She’d been staying with him two months ago, but had moved back to her apartment when he’s broken off their engagement after Angie was killed. They hadn’t spoken much since then so he’s had no idea that she’d moved out of her apartment. Apparently, neither did most of their non-police friends and acquaintances. Eve’s best friend and college roomie, Karen McGuire, said she had only heard from Eve once in the past two months and refused to reveal what they’d talked about simply saying that she didn’t know where Eve was, but if she did, she definitely wouldn’t tell Alex. When he explained the situation she made it clear that if anything happened to Eve, she would hold Alex personally responsible because, if she had moved, it was Alex’s fault. Depressed and worried, Alex checked his watch. Eight o’clock already and he hadn’t made any headway.
Just then Cole strode into the room. Sliding a thin manila folder across the large, round, wooden conference table to Alex he said, “I have to go, but call me if anything comes up. Those are my notes. I talked to everyone in the building and wrote down anything that could be important, but as far as I can tell the last one who saw her was Ken over in the lab. He said she’d stopped in to check on some results before she headed out. They talked, he asked her to dinner, but she said she was going to hit the gym and then head home. If you know which gym she went to, I’ll stop by and see what I can find out before I head home.”
“She went to the Northwest on 42nd,” Alex replied. Cole nodded and then left. Opening the folder, Alex saw three or four pages of Cole’s neat handwriting. He started reading. Basically, it sounded like Eve had been drawing away from her friends lately and spending more and more time at home or at the gym. Several of her friends said she’d seemed tired all the time. A phone number was scrawled in the left margin, about halfway down the second page, right in the middle of Vicky’s comments. Alex would have smiled if he hadn’t been so worried. Vicky was a very cute blonde who worked over in the lab. Leave it to Cole to get a date and try to solve a case at the same time.
Just then, the phone sitting on the table rang. They’d re-routed Eve’s calls so that they came through the conference room. Whoever was on the line thought they were calling Eve.
“Hello?” Alex asked.
“Hello. Who am I speaking to?” said an authorative voice.
“This is Detective Alex Watson, how can I help you ma’am?”
“Is Eve staying with you again?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.