“Who gives a shit?”
“If you hurt her,” I threaten.
“I just woke up,” she snarls.
“Stand up.”
Man’s voice. Where the hell did that come from?
No-Name and I scramble to our feet.
“Where’s that voice coming from?” she whispers.
Hell if I know. “Sounds like a man.”
But it’s kind of garbled. Like one of those machines that disguises the voice.
“If you want to eat today, you will fight. The winner gets to eat.”
“What?” I instinctively back away from No-Name.
“You have ten minutes. The winner of the battle gets to eat.”
No-Name rushes forward. She hits me hard in the face.
Blood spurts from my nose.
25
Milledgeville Public Safety Office
1:00 p.m.
Phelps had called and demanded Tony come to his office. No doubt someone at the Student Center or one of Parton’s friends had reported his visit. Maybe Dr. Alexander had filed a complaint, but he doubted that scenario. The woman had been as rattled as Joanna over the visit.
Tony issued a final warning to her. “Do not walk out that door until I’m with you.”
“You said that already.” She dropped into a chair in the lobby. “I’ll be right here waiting, honey.” She plastered on a fake smile and dug out her cell phone. “I’ll just play on Facebook. See what all my friends are up to.”
The visit to Alexander had unsettled her. Besides the breakdown in the bathroom at the gas station, she had picked at her lunch. Seemed distracted and distant. She’d said it was only because she remembered going to the clinic and being given her first prescription of birth control pills about a month before she was abducted. Dr. Alexander had been Dr. Kato then. Milledgeville was a small town, made sense that victims would have been to some of the same places and met some of the same faces. His thoughts on the matter had done nothing to calm her. If anything he’d made her more upset.
As for Facebook, he had a feeling she had about as many friends as he did, all of whom could be counted on one hand.
When the receptionist buzzed him through to the chief’s office, Tony glanced at her one last time. She never looked up from her phone.
The short walk to the chief’s office gave him about ten seconds to consider what the hell he was going to do next. He was no closer to finding Tiffany than he had been when he arrived. Something had to give here.
As he’d suspected, Chief Buckley from campus security waited with Phelps.
Phelps said, “Have a seat, Mr. LeDoux.”
“Where are we on the official investigation?” Tony settled into the chair next to Buckley. “I assume things are going well since the two of you are able to take valuable time and assets away from the search to speak with me.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, LeDoux.” Buckley looked to Phelps.
Phelps said, “You dropped by the walk-in clinic this morning and met with Dr. Alexander.”
“Do you have someone following me?” He directed the question to Phelps. He didn’t expect Buckley to have the assets to spare. After all, he had two students missing.
“Dr. Alexander was in a terrible accident about two hours ago,” Phelps said. “She survived but she’s in critical condition. They airlifted her to Macon.”
“Will she make it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Do you suspect foul play?” Someone would have had to act fast to make that happen. They didn’t leave the clinic before quarter of ten.
Phelps shook his head. “Actually we suspect she was trying to kill herself. The one witness to the accident says it looked as if she drove straight into that power pole.” He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Whatever they wanted to know, he wasn’t drawing them a map.
“The reason I called you,” Phelps went on, “is that my detective just told me Dr. Alexander’s nurse said she was very upset after meeting with you and your wife. The doctor said she needed to run home for a few minutes and left a clinic full of patients.”
“We’d like to know what the two of you discussed.” This from Buckley.
“The doctor and I didn’t discuss anything relevant to the case,” Tony clarified up front. He didn’t see the harm in sharing what he had so far. “Both Tiffany and Vickie had recently been prescribed birth control pills by Dr. Alexander. In fact, the nurse mentioned that Alexander did a complete physical on Tiffany and Vickie. I don’t know about Vickie, but my niece had a complete physical when she was home over Christmas break. I can’t imagine she would have bothered with another this soon, which tells me Alexander requested it as a requirement for issuing the birth control prescription.”
Phelps considered the response, and then shook his head. “Maybe Alexander has been milking insurance companies by scheduling unnecessary tests and such but that just doesn’t feel like a reason to want to kill herself.”
Tony shrugged. “You got me, Chief.”
“We don’t have you, LeDoux,” Buckley spoke up. “That’s the problem. It seems as though you’re conducting your own, separate investigation and I, for one, don’t feel that’s conducive to finding these young women.”
“Did you find Conway’s or Alexander’s cell phones?” Tony asked. He looked from one man to the other.
“Not Conway’s,” Phelps admitted, “but we do have Alexander’s.”
“If my visit and the mention of my niece upset her that much, I would suggest you find out who she called after we left. Maybe that call was the reason she aimed for the power pole.”
“We’d do that right now,” Phelps tossed back at him, “except her text and call history was deleted, but we’ll get the records in a couple of days. Just like we got Tiffany’s and Vickie’s.”
Frustration tied a big knot in his gut. Tony hadn’t seen those records yet. “You didn’t mention you’d received those records.”
Phelps shook his head. “No point. The only unknown calls were to a burner phone, ironically the same one. So we know the girls were communicating with the same person. We just can’t track the number to that person.”
Damn it. Tony gritted his teeth. Another dead end.
“Who is this woman with you?” Buckley asked. “My students seem to believe she’s some big shot Hollywood producer.”
Some of Tony’s tension eased at the idea that Joanna had pulled that one off.
“I will get a warrant if she doesn’t voluntarily provide a hair sample,” Phelps reminded him.
Tony barely stifled a smile. “She’s my girlfriend who’s helping with my search for Tiffany. Since she was with me during the time Conway was murdered, she has a firm alibi. Good luck with that warrant.” He stood. “Unless you have an update for me, I’d like to get back out there. This is day eight, gentlemen. How many victims are found alive this late in the game?”
Since neither top cop seemed to have any news worth sharing, Tony walked out. In the lobby, Joanna wasn’t in her chair. He spotted her staring out the plate glass window near the door. The tension around his chest relaxed a fraction. The urge for a couple of shots of bourbon roared through him.
Gotta stay focused.
Joanna didn’t ask any questions until they were in his car. “What did he want?”
“To know who you are.” He backed out of the slot. “A Hollywood producer?”
She grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“It did.” He wondered how she would take the rest. “Alexander left the clinic and drove herself into a power pole. She’s in critical condition.”
“I guess she wasn’t so happy to see me.”
Tony glanced at her. “That’s cold.”
“Yeah, well. What’s cold is being kidnapped, raped and treated like an animal for fourteen days.”
That shut him up. If Tiffany had suffered that treatment, he would make whoever was responsible pay or die trying. If? He knew it was happening and he wasn’t smart enough to find her much less to stop it. He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “Goddamn it.”