Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

First, she had left her car in the garage rather than take it with her. According to her parents, whenever she used the garage, she entered the house through the back door, just steps away. But on the day she disappeared she had parked in the garage and walked down the driveway to the front porch, where she dropped her keys, wallet, and cell phone through the mail slot. Then, presumably, she got into someone’s car and rode away with nothing but the clothes on her back—and perhaps money and a credit card or two in her shoe. It was possible she had been forced into that car at gunpoint and later forced to write her letter, but a gun pressed against the temple makes the average person’s hands shake. The handwriting in Keisha’s letter—which both Mona and Winslow identified as hers—was so tight and fastidious it appeared not to have been done under duress. If anything, it suggested above-average self-control.

At last turning away from the window, I faced the interior of her home to see if I could determine why Keisha had left and how I could begin to look for her.

The living room was configured differently from her parents’—yellow paint instead of wallpaper, no fake fireplace with photos on the mantel, no knick-knacks or souvenirs in sight, a loveseat instead of a couch, a wooden rocker facing the LED TV on the outside wall, and a trio of packed three-shelf bookcases lining the interior wall. Above the bookcases hung three paintings—a coffee-colored nude and a street scene signed by artists whose names I didn’t recognize and a print of the famous Paul Collins painting of Harriet Tubman, gun in hand, leading slaves through the forest.

Beyond the wall with the paintings was a dining room that appeared to double as Keisha’s home office. It had bare orange walls and a square black table with four matching chairs. One side of the table held loose papers, file folders, and a pile of unopened mail. The other held a matching black Dell laptop and inkjet printer and a white iPhone, all plugged in. A quick check showed the phone and computer were password-protected. I’d have to take them to LJ to see if they held anything useful. Then I sifted through the mail—Christmas cards, junk, catalogs, and material from professional associations but no bills because Mona had already covered her daughter’s utilities and credit cards. Their tabs labeled with a fine-point Sharpie, the file folders made it clear Keisha brought her work home. They were stuffed with newspaper clippings, magazine and journal articles, and internet printouts on a variety of topics related to public health, from methodologies for determining disease vectors to strategies for addressing vaccine-resistant parents to clinic protocols for dealing with the homeless. The loose papers consisted of unfiled articles, notes in Keisha’s and other hands, and internal memos from Humanitas. I found an empty folder and slipped the notes, memos, and unfiled articles inside. Then I laid the folder and phone atop the closed computer.

Next, I went into the pale yellow kitchen, which had glass-doored wooden cupboards, a six-bottle wire wine rack on the counter, a stainless steel sink that dated from 1970, and a bistro-style dinette set with two chairs. The refrigerator had been cleaned out and held only a water pitcher and a few beers. The freezer above, however, was packed with meats, frozen vegetables, and plastic cans of concentrated juice. Mona had disposed of the perishables but left the freezer untouched for her daughter’s return. Her optimism left a knot in my stomach.

I moved from the kitchen into a hallway with a closed door on either side and at the end. On the right was a guestroom with a neatly made full-sized bed and an empty dresser and closet. On the left was a clean white bathroom with a Mercator projection shower curtain that had brightly colored land masses and transparent oceans. The medicine cabinet held only over-the-counter products—pain relievers, cold medicines, antihistamines, toothpaste. There were no prescriptions and nothing stronger than Nyquil or Listerine. The linen closet beside the bathroom had towels and sheets on the two upper shelves and blankets on the bottom.

The bedroom at the end of the hall was Keisha’s. It had a queen-sized bed with a bookcase headboard and matching dresser set. The closet was full of pants suits, skirt suits, and stackable shoe racks. One corner of the closet held a tennis racket, a volleyball, and two paintball guns, a rifle and a pistol. A door perpendicular to the bed led to a back porch with two plastic Adirondack chairs and a covered propane grill. I started with the nightstand and moved to the dresser and bureau. The drawers yielded clothing, from jeans to underwear to nightgowns. Atop the dresser were cosmetics, jewelry boxes, and a box of disposable contact lenses. More women’s clothing was in the bureau but the top drawer had men’s briefs and socks, a few shirts, and a pair of jeans. I didn’t expect to find clues to Keisha’s whereabouts in Odell’s clothing but I went through it anyway. There was nothing special about any of it. No custom labels on the shirts, no silk in the underwear. If these were typical of the clothing in his home, and if Keisha’s costume jewelry was any indication, Odell spent his drug money on something other than what he wore and precious stones for his girlfriend.

I thought about that as I went back to the dining room. I jotted a note that I must not only interview Odell’s parents, but also see his apartment, and find a way into his financials. Then I pocketed the iPhone and charger, got the file folder and the laptop, and locked Keisha’s front door with the key her parents had given me to use when they weren’t home.

It was about six o’clock and dark. I had declined Mona’s invitation to stay for dinner because