Outside Aimee Bowe’s house, Max Guppo looked like a snowman, completely encrusted in white.
“We’ve checked with all the neighbors,” he told Stride. “No one saw or heard anything last night. Serena had an officer cruise by three times between midnight and five in the morning. He didn’t see anything. No lights. No cars on the street.”
“Where do we stand with the cassette tape?” Stride asked.
“It’s not that easy to find a cassette player these days. I sent somebody over to my grandmother’s place to see if she has one in her attic. Unless you still use one at home, boss.”
“Nothing but eight-tracks for me, Max.”
Guppo chuckled.
The two of them pushed through the snow to the front door of Aimee’s house. Serena was visible at the fringe of the yard, looking like an apparition in the storm as she searched the grounds. Stride and Guppo took off their boots and replaced them with plastic booties as they went inside the house.
“What do we know so far?” Stride asked.
“Serena already mentioned that several of the windows and doors don’t have working locks. If someone wanted to get inside and surprise Ms. Bowe, it wouldn’t have been hard.”
“But?”
“But the bed doesn’t look slept in, and there are no signs of a struggle. If it was a stranger abduction, I’d expect to find evidence of violence. Even so, she didn’t leave voluntarily. Look at this.” Guppo squatted with difficulty and pointed at the leg of an oak end table in the living room. “Right here, where the leg connects to the table, we found hair caught in the seam.”
“So she was dragged along the floor?” Stride asked.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Which means she was already unconscious,” he added.
Guppo frowned. “Or dead.”
“Any evidence of blood?”
“No.”
Stride wandered over to the fireplace and stared at the cold ashes. Wind whistled down through the open flu. “What else?”
“There was a wooden coaster on the coffee table. We identified minute traces of powder in the ridges. We’ll be having it tested.”
“What’s your theory?”
“According to Serena, Aimee was using the coaster where we found the powder to hold her wineglass. Serena said the open wine bottle in the refrigerator was mostly full when Aimee poured a glass. Now there’s barely two inches of wine left in that bottle.”
“So either she kept drinking a lot after Serena left,” Stride said, “or she had company.”
“Right.”
“She knew whoever abducted her.”
“I think so,” Guppo replied. “And my bet is that when the results come back on the powder we found, it will probably be some kind of sedative drug. Whoever was here drugged her wine.”
“Well, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Make sure we test the sofa for any hair or bodily fluids. I want to make sure Aimee wasn’t sexually assaulted before she was dragged out of here.”
“On it,” Guppo said.
Stride went back to the front door. He reclaimed his boots and headed outside, where the snow stung his face. He crammed his hat down on his head and squinted into the wind. The morning was gray, buried under clouds. He felt the cold with each breath, and it was one of those days when he missed having cigarette smoke in his lungs. Jungle Jack was right. The craving never went away.
At the street, Serena waited for him at his Expedition. Her long black hair was wet. Her hands were shoved into the pockets of her black jeans. She stared upward at the electrical wires strung along the street. She looked tall and strong, the way she always did, but her expression was troubled.
He came up beside her. “Did you find anything in the yard?”
“No.”
“Not finding a body is a good thing,” Stride told her.
“I know that.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault,” she snapped back at him. “I never should have left her alone. I should have trusted my instincts. I was so busy trying to convince myself that Aimee’s mystical talk was all crap that I stopped listening to my own gut.”
“What did it tell you?” Stride asked.
“That she was in danger.”
“There’s no way you could have predicted something like this. And we have no idea what’s really going on. Guppo doesn’t think it was a break-in. He’s guessing she was drugged.”
Serena frowned in confusion. “Do you think this could be Casperson?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know what he would gain by staging a copycat of Art Leipold. He tries to stay out of the headlines.”
He felt his phone vibrating inside his pocket. He checked it and saw that Guppo was calling from inside the house. It was a quick call, and then Stride shoved his phone back in his jeans.
“Max says they were able to find a cassette player,” Stride said. “We can listen to the tape. Let’s get back to headquarters.”
Stride turned away, but Serena reached out and grabbed his arm. “Jonny? What if this isn’t a copycat?”
He stared at her face, which was flushed with cold. Snow gathered on her eyelids and melted into water on her cheeks. “What do you mean?”
“Last night, Aimee told me she thought Art Leipold was innocent. She said somebody else put all those women in the box. I didn’t believe her when she said it, but now? I don’t know.”
“Did she say why she thought so?”
“This is Aimee. I think she just sensed it.”
Stride shook his head. “Come on, Serena.”
“It sounds crazy to me, too, but look what’s going on.”
“It’s been eleven years. If Art was innocent, why would the killer have gone dark all that time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Every shred of evidence pointed to Art. He did it.”
“I hope you’re right, Jonny,” Serena told him. “I do. But even with Art dead, we both know what’s waiting for us at headquarters, don’t we? We’re about to listen to a tape from a woman who’s locked in a cage somewhere. And if we don’t find her soon, she’s going to die.”
*
“Save me.”
That was the first whisper Stride heard.
He looked at Serena, who nodded at him. There was no doubt. It was Aimee Bowe’s voice. The tape crackled as if time had rewound. It might as well have been eleven years earlier, when Stride stood under a water-stained ceiling in the basement of City Hall. Back then, he’d listened to the first victim, Kristal Beech, saying the same words to him. Maggie had been there. So had Guppo. He’d gone home to his wife, Cindy, and told her about the horror he felt as he listened to the tape.
They’d all been much younger.
“It’s cold. Oh, my God, it’s so cold. And dark. I can’t see anything. I can’t even see my hand when I put it in front of my eyes. Where am I? Tell me where I am. Who are you? Why are you doing this to me? I know, I know, I’m supposed to say it. Save me. Save me.”
He heard static in the silence. He listened for something in the background, some clue, some noise, that would tell them where she was. But the cage was virtually soundproof. Just as it had been back then. The only sound was the ragged in-and-out gasp of Aimee’s breathing.
When she spoke again, her voice was louder.
“I don’t know how much time I have. There’s no water in here. No food. And the cold is like a knife. You have to find me. Quickly. I know about the others. I know they died because you failed. Yes, you. Jonathan Stride. I’m here because of you. I’m paying for your mistakes.”
Stride pushed the plastic button on the tape recorder to pause the playback.
“Is this real?” he asked Serena.
She didn’t say anything.
“What do you think?” he asked again. “Is this real? Or is something else going on here?”
“I don’t know.”
He started the tape again.
“My name is Aimee Bowe. I don’t know where I am, but you know all you need to know to find me. My life is in your hands. I need you to save me if you can. Save me, Jonathan Stride.”
The tape rolled on, but the recording was over. Stride let it play for several more minutes to see if anything else was on the tape. It was empty.
“I didn’t hear any clues,” he said. “Nothing that would tell us where she is.”