“Did you get anything from her car?” Rowley asked.
Shannon shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t find anything that’s going to help us.”
Rowley seemed lost for a moment, his eyes dazed before focusing on DiGrazia and then Shannon. He reached over and handed a pad of paper to Shannon. “Here’s what you asked for,” he said. His body seemed to crumple as he sat back in his chair.
There were about a dozen restaurants listed on the front sheet. Shannon quickly read through the rest of what Rowley had written and then handed the pad to DiGrazia.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Rowley said to no one in particular. “Oh, Jesus, poor Janice.”
“We’ll do everything we can to find her.”
“I should be home,” Rowley said.
“I’d like you to stay a little while longer. We have a polygraph set up for one.”
“I have to get home. Somebody could be trying to call.”
“There were no messages on your answering machine. I don’t think this is a kidnapping.”
Rowley’s long face screwed up as if he were trying to keep from crying.
“Do you know if any of your steak knives are missing?” DiGrazia asked.
“What?”
“One of them is missing. Do you know about it?”
“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Shannon said. “Another half hour and you’ll take the polygraph test. Then you can go home.”
“I don’t like this,” DiGrazia stated in a low, guttural voice to his partner when they were alone. His complexion had turned a dull gray, his eyes closed to thin slits.
Shannon didn’t say anything.
“Why would some freak have to go back to her apartment to pick up a knife? I just don’t like it.”
“It may not be that way.” Shannon felt tired. Maybe more beat than tired, as if he were dragging cement blocks from around his legs and arms. He poured himself a cup of coffee. “I want to see if I can pick up her trail. Would you mind hanging around for the polygraph? Maybe you could do a computer search, see if anyone’s been released who could fit this.”
DiGrazia nodded slowly. “Yeah, sure. Give me a call if you find anything.”
The manager of the Bombay House recognized Janice Rowley’s picture. “Yes, she was here.”
“Do you remember what time?”
“She used a credit card. Wait, let me get the receipts.” He bent down under the register and pulled out a tin box and brought it up to the counter. After sifting through it he pulled out a slip of paper.
“Here it is,” he said as he handed the receipt to Shannon. “She was here at five forty-five. I had written the time in the left corner. It helps me keep track of when we’re busiest.”
Shannon noticed Janice Rowley’s signature on the receipt. He asked whether the manager remembered anything else that could help.
“No,” he shook his head after thinking about it. “She paid for her food and left. She’s a nice woman, though. She comes here often. I hope nothing has happened.”
The restaurant was in Somerville, five minutes from Janice Rowley’s apartment. Shannon thanked the manager for his help, then checked out the small parking lot in back. It would’ve been dark and the cars there would have been obscured from the street. As Shannon stood in the parking lot a chill ran through him. He lit a cigarette and breathed in deeply, trying to pull some warmth from it. Janice Rowley had parked there last night and someone had gotten in her car and had waited for her. Sometime later that person had dumped her car at the industrial park. Shannon closed his eyes and imagined what it had been like. Janice Rowley walking briskly, almost running towards her car to get out from the cold. Sitting in the front seat, putting the key in the ignition, and then a hand from the back covering her mouth, another grabbing her by the throat. Her slipping out of consciousness…
Shannon opened his eyes, cold sweat running down his back. For a brief heartbeat he had smelled that sickly pungent odor again. For that same brief heartbeat he had a vague image of the person who had been hiding in Janice Rowley’s car. An image of someone large, of diseased flesh, and of evil. He couldn’t hold on to it, though. It slipped away into the ether.
Shannon took another drag on his cigarette and then tossed it to the ground. The question was, What happened next? Did he drop Janice Rowley off someplace and then dump the car, or did he exchange cars at the industrial park, moving Janice Rowley to the trunk of his car? It would’ve been about six o’clock by the time he drove to the industrial park and there would be too many people around. It would’ve been too dangerous to move a body between cars. No, he left Janice Rowley someplace first, then got rid of her car and walked back to her. He got to the Bombay House parking lot the same way, by walking.
On his way back to the station Shannon made a detour to the industrial park to talk to security there. No one saw anything unusual the night before, nor did they have any video security cameras for the parking lot.
When Shannon arrived back at the station he told DiGrazia about finding where Janice Rowley had stopped to pick up dinner and his thoughts about what happened afterwards. DiGrazia listened patiently and then told him that Kyle Rowley’s polygraph test had been inconclusive.
“That’s too bad. Was there a feel one way or another?”
“Nah. You know Parker, if the results are fuzzy then the test is inconclusive. That’s all he’s willing to say. I didn’t get any type of read from watching Rowley.”
“Anything about the steak knife?”
“Inconclusive, just like the rest of the test.”
“Where’s Rowley now?”
“I sent him home.”
Shannon was shaking his head. “It would’ve been nice to have that test back him up, but I don’t think he’s involved. I have a strong gut feeling Janice Rowley was abducted from that parking lot.”
“She could’ve gotten home with the food. She could’ve been killed in the apartment and then dumped. That nasty odor you got a whiff of could’ve been spoiled Indian food. Hubby could turn out to be as inconclusive as his test results.”
“I don’t think so.” Shannon paused as he tried to block out an image from his dream of Janice Rowley bound and gagged with red lines crisscrossing her naked body. “Not from the vibes I picked up from that parking lot,” he added after a while.
DiGrazia gave his partner a hard look. He was going to make a crack about whether Shannon had called the psychic hotline, but he trusted his partner’s intuition, maybe more than his own. “You think she was left somewhere within walking distance of where her car was dumped?”
“More specific than that, I think she was left somewhere between that restaurant and the industrial park. It’s about four miles between the two. I think our guy walked a couple of miles to get to that restaurant. He probably didn’t want to walk more than a couple of miles from where he left her car. My guess is his hole is closer to the industrial park. He’d be too anxious to get back to his victim to want to walk too far.”
“And you think she’s still alive?”
“What time did Kyle Rowley leave his apartment this morning?”
“Around five. He said he had to do something, so he drove around looking for his wife’s car. He came to the station around seven.”
“Sometime after five this morning our perp would’ve retrieved that steak knife. Yeah, she’s still alive.”
DiGrazia made a face as if he had stomach problems. “I don’t know,” he said. “If it was an abduction I don’t see why he couldn’t have moved her to another car. He could’ve parked somewhere and waited until the industrial park emptied out.”