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Calder was shouting into the phone, “It’s Dawn, I tell you! Perkins, are you hearing this or not?”
“I pulled in Compton. You’re on speaker with both of us now.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital.”
“Aw, good. Have you seen Elle? I got a text from her that she was going to see Dawn, but now I can’t raise her on her phone. She needs to know about this ASAP.”
“What time did you get that text?” Compton asked. “Elle was supposed to be on her way back to the hideaway house.”
“She persuaded Glenda to drop her at the hospital so she could visit Dawn. Glenda’s been at her office, waiting for Elle to call her to come pick her up. She hasn’t heard from her. She must still be with Dawn. Get her the hell away from her.”
The two detectives exchanged a look. Perkins slipped out of the storeroom. Compton remained on the line with Calder. “What makes you think Dawn was behind the shooting?”
“I’ll tell you everything when I get there. Just keep Elle away from her. Dawn should be taken into custody. For questioning if for nothing else. As a person of interest. Whatever. If her mother is there, she probably should be arrested, too.”
“They’re gone, Calder.”
“What do you mean gone? Gone from the hospital?”
“Dawn checked herself out.”
“Jesus. When?”
“A little over an hour ago. We came to question Dawn further about some discrepancies regarding her husband’s—”
“Later. Where is Elle?”
“Perkins has gone to check. How’d you get onto this about Dawn?”
“From Mrs. Draper. I went to see her. Almost in passing she mentioned the opioid guy’s widow moving to Dallas. I followed up. But all this can wait.Where is Elle?”
Perkins returned in time to hear that. “Elle was here, but she came and went,” he said, more grim than usual. “She stopped at the reception desk, was told Dawn had been discharged, and left.”
“Left how? Left for where?” Calder demanded.
“The security guard at the main entrance thinks it was an Uber. Doesn’t know where to.”
Calder’s panting breaths came through loud and clear. “Nobody knows where she is?”
“We’ll track her down,” Compton said. “Go to the house. Wait there. We’ll meet you—Calder?Calder!”
He had disconnected.
Dawn stamped hard on Elle’s phone. “I think it was already busted, but you can’t be too careful.”
Elle was back in the living room, in the same chair, but this time there were bands of duct tape securing her to its arms. She hadn’t put up a fight. Because not only had she felt Dawn’s warm breath on the back of her neck, but the cold muzzle of a gun had also been pressed against it.
Strangely courteous, Dawn had steered her away from the ghastly scene in the bedroom and back into the living room. She’d motioned her into the chair and produced a roll of duct tape from the drawer of an end table.
“Mom stores things in the oddest places,” she’d said. “It’s one of her quirks. Once, I found a tin of lighter fluid in the silverware drawer.” Her affectionate smile was, to Elle, obscene. It caused bile to fill the back of her throat.
Elle hadn’t resisted as Dawn had ripped off a length of the silver tape with her teeth, passed it to Elle, and ordered her to wind it around her right arm. “No cheating. Pull it tight.”
When that arm was secured, Dawn laid the menacing-looking pistol on an ottoman and used another strip of tape to bind Elle’s left arm. “There. You may lose some circulation in your hands and fingers. I guess it depends on how long it takes Calder Hudson to get here.”
“He won’t be coming. He doesn’t know where I am.”
