Page 50 of Girl, Empty
One more knock on the door.Then, to Ella’s surprise, she saw movement behind the frosted glass.She gestured for Ripley to hurry up and get over.
The door unlocked, and it opened to reveal a young woman in what Ella guessed was a cleaner’s outfit.Blue scrubs, stains on the shoulder.‘Yes?’the woman said.
‘Hi.We’re with the FBI.Is Alexander Sinclair home?’
‘Mr.Sinclair has just gone to the store.’Her accent was Eastern Europe.
‘How long will he be?’
The cleaner pocketed a rag.‘I never know with Mr.Sinclair.Could you come back at’
‘We’ll wait,’ interrupted Ripley.She flashed her badge.‘May we come in?’
‘That’s….I don’t… Mr.Sinclair is-’
‘He’ll understand.’Ripley stepped forward in lieu of an invitation.The cleaner hesitantly stepped aside, looking all but like she was welcoming a fatal dose of anthrax into her boss’s house.Ella reassured herself that it wasn’t illegal to enter a home with the resident’s consent, even if that consent had been a little coerced.The cleaner opened the door and Ripley walked inside.That’s all a judge would see.
‘Is there a reason Mr.Sinclair went to the store himself?’Ella asked.‘He doesn’t seem the… store-going type.’
‘I cannot drive,’ the cleaner said.‘Please.Sit in the front room, if you must.I need to get back to the job.Is this okay?’
Ripley said, ‘You go right ahead.We’ll just take a seat.’
‘Down the hallway.Door number four.I’ll be upstairs in the bedroom.’
The agents followed the vague directions down the corridor and through the fourth door on the right.A grandiose living room emerged, which looked more like the lovechild of three disparate living rooms rather than a single one.A leather sectional of beige took up one corner, and it faced a TV so massive it could probably be seen from space.The opposite wall had a silver theme, complete with a single chair in desperate need of TLC.Then there was a multi-colored corner full of abstract art.Ella could already feel Ripley’s frustration bubbling over.
‘Did he rob a furniture store?’Ripley said.
‘Or three furniture stores.’
‘Look at that crappy art.Max makes more interesting pieces than that.’
‘Just take a seat, woman.Don’t waste all that rage.Not when you can direct it at Sinclair himself when he gets here.’
Ripley dropped gracelessly onto Sinclair’s beige sofa and put her feet on his coffee table.She sighed and said, ‘It would be nice if the cleaner made us a drink, wouldn’t it?’
‘We can’t ask that.It’s rude,’ Ella said.She was circling the living room in search of anything suspicious, but there wasn’t much to see.If not for the strange mismatch of styles, it would seem like a show-home.‘Mia, you think this guy is one of those… tech billionaires?Those nutty recluses?You hear about them all the time.Apparently there’s hundreds of them.’
‘Billionaire?God no.This is house is barely seven figures.It’s big, but it’s built like crap.’She rapped her knuckles against the wall beside her.‘You hear that?Drywall with fiberglass insulation.Cheap as hell.Not to mention I can hear the freeway from here.You couldn’t pay me to listen to car engines.’
The floorboards from the upstairs creaked.Ella guessed the cleaner had gone back to work.‘We need to be ready to grab Sinclair when he gets here.If he gets a sniff that we’re FBI, he’ll run.Let’s hope he doesn’t recognize the car.’
‘You know, we can’t really risk that,’ Ripley said.‘If he’s our guy, he’ll be in the paranoid stage.’
‘Second Kill Syndrome.’
‘Exactly.So we should… get a closer look.Maybe we ought to wait out in the hallway.’
Ella caught the ulterior motive right away.The hallway.Waiting out there meant they’d be right outside the other doors in the corridor; doors the cleaner hadn’t invited them into.Doors that perhaps led to Sinclair’s private collection.
‘What’s the legal stance on that?’
‘I forgot.’
‘Did you choose to forget?’
‘Yup.’
