CHAPTER SEVEN
Cassie’s apartment was only two blocks east, and the whole journey there, Ella couldn’t shake the feeling that their killer had cut off this tattoo for a reason. The agents stood outside the doors to the Zion House apartment complex, waiting on a response from apartment number 23. Ella rang the buzzer twice.
According to Vanessa, Cassie’s Mom tattoo was the only reminder that somewhere in her daughter was the bright young girl that had existed before drugs had ruined her. Vanessa had etched Cassie’s tattoo herself, and Cassie had returned the favor by tattooing her name on Vanessa’s arm. The whole act had been a bonding experience on Cassie’s twenty-first birthday. It had been Vanessa’s last good memory.
So that raised a new question in Ella’s mind. The killer had sliced off a section of the leg bearing the tattoo. Was the tattoo a factor in this decision, or was it a coincidence?
“Who is it?” a voice boomed from the intercom.
“Hi, is that Roxy?” Ella said.
“Who’s asking?”
“The FBI. We need to ask you some things about Cassie Sullivan.”
“I already told the cops everything.” Static down the line. The intercom connection died.
“Hello?” Paige said.
No response.
Ella never understood why people did this. All it did was make them look more suspicious.
“Uh, what now?” Paige asked. “Keep trying?”
“Well, buzzing again isn’t gonna work. She’ll just ignore us. We need to get inside.”
Ella pulled on the doors but they didn’t budge. Through the frosty glass window, Ella saw a large-but-cramped foyer; a pile of refuse sacks, kids’ toys and two old bikes. The place wasn’t much to admire, but it was just her luck that it had working locks in place.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Paige asked. “We just need to play the old buzz-and-run. Just without the running.”
Paige ran her finger down the intercom, pushing every buzzer on the list. Then she joined Ella at the door. A swarm of voices came from the speaker, then the door clicked open. Ella yanked it and both agents stepped inside the foyer.
It wasn’t the most graceful of entrances but it did the trick. They began ascending the stairs to apartment 23.
“Buzz and run. I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” Ella said. “Nicely done.”
“You never played that as a kid?”
“Never. You just push buzzers and run away?”
“Pretty much. Sometimes you knock on doors instead. If you didn’t play that, what the hell did you play?”
“Board games. Books. That kind of thing,” Ella said.
“You played books?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Were you one of those girls that never left the house?” Paige asked. “I did not picture you as one of those.”
Apartment 23 loomed at the end of the corridor. One way or another, Ella was either luring Roxy out of there or barging her way inside.
“We didn’t have a whole lot going on where I lived. I grew up in Carroll County in Virginia. It’s just fields and mountains for about three hundred miles. Sometimes we’d have competitions who could do the most rolls down the hill.”
“Wow. I always pictured you as one of those city slickers,” Paige said.
“No way. I don’t think I saw a city until I was about seventeen. Have you always lived in D.C.?”