Page 109 of Now or Never

“You got that look like something’s going on in your head,” Lula said.

“I want to take a look at the area between the laundromat and Zoran’s house. We’ve never covered those streets.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Lula said. “We should be looking for abandoned haunted houses and loose manhole covers. No telling where his hidey-hole is located.”

If he had Julie Werly, which was a bigif, it would have to be someplace quiet. Like a cellar. His house didn’t have a cellar. It was built on a slab.

I drove to Exeter Street and slowly cruised around, dividing the neighborhood into four-block grids. I was looking for houses that seemed empty or unkempt and larger houses that might havecellars. I designated two houses that had possibilities. One was directly behind Zoran’s house and the other was across the street from the Werly house.

The whole time we were doing this I was checking my rearview mirror to see if I was being followed. Cars would come and go, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a tail.

I parked in front of Zoran’s house.

“Uh-oh, are we going in here again?” Lula asked. “If we’re going in here, I’m not looking in the freezer. I’m not looking nowhere.”

“I’m not going in. I want to walk around these two blocks and get a better look at the yards and houses. There are two houses that interest me.”

“You’re just looking from the outside, right?”

“Right.”

We walked the two blocks, and we returned to the car. It was almost noon, with bright sun overhead and a couple puffy clouds in the sky. Not vampire-stalking conditions. I had the AirTag in my pocket and my gun on my hip. I didn’t feel at risk, but I wasn’t going to push my luck either. I thought the two houses warranted investigation. And I thought it best if someone else did the investigating.

“I’m going to get Morelli to take a look at those two houses,” I said to Lula.

I called Morelli and he didn’t pick up. Probably sleeping with his ringer turned off. I called Ranger and got the control room. I was told he was on a conference call, and they asked if I needed them to break in. I told them it wasn’t an emergency, but I’d like him to call me when he was done.

“I need a soda,” Lula said. “And a sandwich. They had good-looking sandwiches at the deli on the corner.”

We drove down Freemont, parked on the street, and went into the deli. It was part bakery, part deli, and part grocery, with a fresh-fruit section advertising Jug Produce.

“Bruno is everywhere,” Lula said. “He’s franchising fruit and next he’ll have his ice cream all over the place. That’s the way it is when you’re a tycoon.”

We walked past the fruit to the deli counter. We grabbed a couple premade sandwiches, got a couple bags of chips and a couple sodas. Lula went to the ladies’ room, and I took our food outside to eat. It was a beautiful day with a cloudless blue sky and a little chill in the air. I sat on the wooden bench that had been placed in front of the deli and set the bag of food and the sodas next to me. I tried calling Morelli again. Still no answer. I put my phone down and unwrapped a sandwich, and a tan van drove by and continued down the street. It was an old panel van with a large dent over the left rear wheel. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good. The van met Mrs. Werly’s description. Old tan van with a dent in the back. I grabbed my messenger bag and followed the van. It cruised down the second block of Freemont and crossed the road, and I lost it. There’d been traffic on the cross street and when the street cleared, there was no van.

Halfway down the third block of Freemont, I spotted the rear end of the van. It was parked behind a three-story tenement-type apartment building. Only the back bumper was visible.

I went to my jeans pocket to get my phone and there was no phone. Mental head slap. I’d been so fixated on following the van that I’d left my phone on the bench. Not a problem. I was wearing my smartwatch, I had Ranger’s AirTag in my sweatshirt pocket, and my gun was on my hip.

I stood there for a couple minutes listening, looking for activity. I didn’t pick up anything coming from the back of the tenement,so I crept down the driveway. It was the same van that I saw drive by the deli. Tan. Dented. No windows in the back doors or on the sides of the van. I moved up to the driver’s-side door and looked in the window. There was a brown paper grocery bag, a grungy sweatshirt, and a ball cap on the passenger seat.

The back door to the building was cracked open. It was just steps away from the van. I went to the door and looked in. Small entrance hallway with stairs leading up to a landing and more stairs, and stairs leading down to a short hall with two doors. I’d seen enough. I needed to get help. I took a step back to leave, a basement door opened, and Zoran walked out into the hall. We locked eyes for a beat, and he charged up the stairs at me. I had a gun, but my first instinct wasn’t to use it. My instinct was to run. I stumbled going over the threshold, and he caught me at the van.

He grabbed the back of my sweatshirt and yanked me off my feet. I screamed for help and tried to kick him. We rolled around on the ground with me scratching and clawing at him. He managed to get me facedown with his knee on my back andzzzzt. Everything went black.

A split second before I went scramble brain, I’d seen the stun gun in Zoran’s hand. I’d been stun gunned before, so I knew the drill. You come back slowly. Muscle contractions stop. Eyes open. Blurry. Tingling in fingers. Arms wake up. This time it was different. I’d been out for a while. I was foggy. Not tingly. Fingers and toes were working. I was on my back. Popcorn ceiling. Who has a popcorn ceiling? Popcorn ceilings went out thirty years ago. Popcorn ceilings dampened sound, but they contained asbestos. My building had popcorn ceilings in the basement laundry room. Probably illegal.

The fog was starting to lift. My eyes were focusing better. I tried to sit up and got slightly nauseated. I stayed down for a couple minutes, waiting for the nausea to pass. I tried sitting up again. No nausea. I looked around the room. The size of a small bedroom. Dimly lit by an overhead bulb. No windows. Two doors. A cot against a wall. A small table and a metal folding chair. A trash can. A large screw eye embedded in a concrete floor. Chain attached. The other end of the chain was attached to a thick metal bracelet that was latched onto my ankle. More nausea. This time the nausea wasn’t drug induced. This time the origin of the nausea was raw, cold terror.

I no longer had my gun. I felt for the AirTag. Gone. I got onto all fours and then onto my feet. I took a moment to steady myself. I heard something whimper, and my heart skipped several beats. Something was huddled in a dark corner next to what looked like an under-the-counter refrigerator. There was movement. It was a woman. She was crouched in the corner, but I could see that she was very thin. Large, frightened eyes.

“Julie Werly?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“I came to rescue you.”

The instant I said it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded. I’d totally messed up. I’d allowed myself to get kidnapped, and now I was chained to the floor in some dungeon with a popcorn ceiling. I made a sound that was halfway between a bark of laughter and a sob, and tears were collecting behind my eyes. I’d found Julie Werly, and she was alive. I was happy and scared and pissed off that I hadn’t been able to come in like Batgirl and rescue her. Get it together, I told myself. This isn’t the time to fall apart.

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