Read Online Broken by Matthew Storm - Free Book Online

to put them back into an
approximation of their rightful places. This had been a turtle about the size
of a softball, before the figurine had met its unfortunate end.
    I took
one of the shards into the living room and held it up against the scratch on
the wall. The colors matched. Someone, most likely Heather Davies, had hurled
the turtle at the wall hard enough to shatter it. The ceramic was heavy; it
wouldn’t have broken easily. It didn’t seem likely that Heather had been angry
with the turtle. A more reasonable theory was that she had been meaning to do
some damage to someone standing near the door.
    Returning
to the kitchen, I took another swallow of the tequila, but this time my stomach
rebelled and I vomited it up into the sink almost instantly. It took a moment
of clutching the side of the counter and breathing hard to get myself back
under control. When I had my breath, I took another drink, swallowing hard and
fighting off the nausea that followed to keep it down. When the nausea passed,
I took another drink for good measure. I didn’t have time for withdrawal
symptoms tonight. If I didn’t keep drinking I was going to be useless before
long.
    I wiped
my mouth with my sleeve and then put the turtle back together. Heather could
get some superglue when she came back and fix the little guy herself. If she came back.
    I took
another lap around the apartment but couldn’t think of anything else to do
here. This was looking very much like an abduction to me. I couldn’t think of
anything else that made sense.
    The
security guard I’d talked to before was still in the lobby when I went back
downstairs. “Everything all right?” he asked me.
    At first
I thought he was asking if I was all right. My eyes were probably
bloodshot from vomiting, and I knew I couldn’t smell all that great. But then I
guessed he was talking about my search of Heather’s condo. “When did you see
Heather Davies last?” I asked.
    “A week
ago, maybe.” He frowned. “I’m not sure, to be honest.”
    “She got
a delivery recently,” I said. “Do you know what that was about?”
    The
guard took a clipboard out of his desk and began flipping through the sheets on
it. “Here it is,” he said. “Furniture delivery the Tuesday before last.”
    I wasn’t
sure if that had been ten days ago or not, but it would have been close.
“Delivery from where?”
    “It
doesn’t say,” he said. “Just that they were in at 2:53 pm, out at 3:20. Two
crates in and out.”
    Crates.
That made sense. It would be hard to drag a woman and a child out of a security
building like this. But if you knocked them out or drugged them and then shut
them up in wooden crates, nobody would think to look twice at you as you
wheeled them outside. “Would anyone here have looked inside the crates?” I
asked.
    He shook
his head. “Oh, no. We take security pretty seriously, but we’d never inspect
anyone’s property like that. We’re not really expecting to be bombed,” he
laughed.
    “All
right,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
    I left
the building behind and went back to my car. This wasn’t at all how I’d
expected this visit to go. I’d gone in thinking I might find some clues as to
where Heather Davies had taken off to. A copy of a hotel reservation printout.
A Lonely Planet guide to somewhere warm and sunny. Instead I was nearly certain
that Heather Davies and her daughter had been violently abducted from their
condo. Those crates for the “furniture delivery” had been empty when they’d
arrived at the building, and full when they’d left. I had no idea whether the
women were dead or alive when they’d left the building. There was no blood
visible in the condo, but blood could be cleaned, and any smell left lingering
from the chemicals the kidnappers might have used would have long since
dissipated by now.
    I sat in
my car and thought about it. Did Alan Davies know about the abduction? Was that
why he was paying me such an absurd amount