“Ms. Jeffries? I’m Detective Schliesman. You said on the phone that you have something pertinent about Teresa Cavasos’ possible disappearance?” She began leading Paige down a hall where it was a little more quiet.
“Yes, um, I’m an artist,” she told the older woman.
“I’ve heard of you.” The woman didn’t smile or give any sort of encouragement. The clear reds surrounding her assured Paige that Detective Schliesman was honest and a good person overall, but the woman was angry. Exhausted.
“I won’t waste any of your time, Detective. I just have this picture.” She got the drawing out of the file that held it. “It’s Teresa Cavasos, I’m sure.”
The detective didn’t take the picture like Paige expected. But the red surrounding the woman flared momentarily.
Although she hid it well, whatever Paige had just said caused a flash of irritation or anger to course through the other woman. That wasn’t good.
“Can you just hold that until we get to my desk, Ms. Jeffries?”
Paige didn’t understand, but nodded. “Sure.”
When they got to the woman’s desk, she surprised Paige again by pulling out a pair of latex gloves to grab the drawing. Without touching it anywhere with her own skin, Detective Schliesman placed the paper in a clear evidence bag.
So much for Paige’s concern that they wouldn’t take the drawing seriously or pay it any attention. Schliesman was definitely paying attention to it now.
“Please, sit down.” She gestured to the chair crammed into the small space between her desk and the one next to it. “You drew this, Ms. Jeffries?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
Paige wanted to keep as close to the truth as she could. “Saturday night.”
The woman looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Are you friends with Teresa Cavasos? Know her from somewhere?”
Paige had known these questions would be tricky. “No. I don’t know her.”
“But you drew what could only be called an amazing resemblance to her. With remarkable detail. Were you watching her? Studying her, in order to get this much detail?”
This was where Paige knew deviating from the truth was going to be necessary. “No. It’s an artist exercise. After a day of being around people, I try to pick one and recreate the person and scene from memory. I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years.”
“And you happened to pick out Teresa Cavasos to draw on Saturday?”
And the red surrounding Detective Schliesman kept flaring. The woman was keeping her temper at bay, but just barely. She was frustrated and what Paige was telling her was not helping.
“Yes. Normally with this type of exercise I draw strangers and never know who they are and never think any more about it.” A partial truth — Paige never knew who she drew, but she definitely thought more about them. “But when I saw the ad in the paper Teresa’s family had taken out, I thought I would bring the picture down here.”
“Are you hoping to claim the reward?”
Paige shook her head. “No. No, I don’t need or want any money. I’m just trying to help.”
That was the absolute truth. But she was beginning to think this whole thing was a bad idea.
“Look.” Paige turned a little more towards Detective Schliesman ignoring all the chatter, ringing phones, and general chaos going on at desks all around them. “I don’t have any agenda here. I just wanted to bring this drawing because it has so much detail about the location around Teresa.”
“But you weren’t watching Teresa at that location?”
“No. I don’t recall seeing her at all. But an artist’s mind works differently somehow.” That was putting it mildly in her case. “I just drew what I pictured in my mind and here it is. It might be nothing.”
Another officer walked by and Detective Schliesman grabbed him, showing him the drawing. “Randal, you recognize this? The area in the background?”
The man stopped to look. “Whoa. Hey, isn’t that Teresa Cavasos?”
“Yep.”
“Isn’t she—”
“The background, Randal. Do you recognize that area in the back of the drawing? I just need confirmation of what I’m thinking.”
The man looked at the detective, then over at Paige then finally stared down at the picture.
“Yeah, sure Janet. It’s that fancy boutique strip mall over in Healy Heights, right? I can tell by the way the flowers are laid out over here and the angle of this building.” He pointed to the edge of the drawing.
“Thanks. That’s what I thought too.”
Relief coursed through Paige. The officers knew the area. So maybe this would help them, in some way, find the missing woman.
Randal handed the drawing back to Detective Schliesman. “Isn’t that strip mall just a couple blocks away from the hotel where—”
“Yep.” The woman definitely cut him off.
“And I thought this had turned over to hom—”
“Thanks for your help, Randal. We’ll talk later.”
The man was wise enough to know he wasn’t going to get a full sentence out around Detective Schliesman, so gave Paige one more look and left.
There was something going on here that Paige didn’t understand. But she had done what she had set out to do. She would let the police take it all from here. She stood up.
“That’s really all I had to offer, Detective. I hope it is helpful in some way.”
“Ms. Jeffries, do you mind waiting just a few more minutes? This drawing is very interesting and I’d like to show it to a few other people who might have some questions for you.”
The detective’s tone was as friendly as the smile on her face, but Paige could see the pulsing red that still dominated her entire person.
Detective Schliesman was angry. What Paige didn’t know was whether it was directed at her or the case or what.
“Well…”
“Let me take you somewhere where it’s not so chaotic to wait.” She gestured around her with her arm. “It can be overwhelming in here, I know.”
The woman took her and led her down the hallway, opening the door to a small room with a table and chairs. Paige had to admit, the quiet was a relief.
“If you could just wait here,” the other woman told her. “And this is a non-cell phone use room, if you don’t mind. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
Detective Schliesman didn’t wait for a response and the door closed behind her with a resounding click.
Paige looked around the room —gray walls with no decor whatsoever. There were cameras in two corners and a large mirror taking up the entire far wall. The only furniture was a sparse table with four medal chairs surrounding it.
Paige had seen enough TV to know where she was. She walked over to the door and tried to open it.
Locked. She went back and dropped down into one of the uncomfortable chairs.
She was in an interrogation room and was evidently now a suspect in Teresa Cavasos’ disappearance.
Chapter Fifteen
“Yo, Brett,” Alex shouted from his desk, that damn phone receiver still glued to his shoulder even two hours later. The man was the king of multitasking. “Report of our Jane Doe from Friday. Got a positive ID. Sending it your way.”
Brett threw his arm up in acknowledgment —no need to add to the late afternoon chaos around all the desks by yelling— and sent the electronic file directly to print.
Call him old school, but he preferred a hard copy of information in his hand. The tactile nature of it helped him think. He walked to the office’s common printer thankful it was fast. It was time to see their Jane Doe without any bruises, and hopefully be one step closer to proving, or disproving, his serial killer theory.
The name and general info sheet came up first: Teresa Cavasos. Single, Caucasian female, twenty-eight years old. 5’5, 120 pounds. No criminal record, so she hadn’t been in the system for easy identification. Between that and whatever had happened in the coroner’s office requiring bodies to be sent out to county morgues, it had caused a much slower identification of the body. Brett noticed the report had also been sent to an officer in missing persons a few hours ago. The missing person wasn’t missing anymore. She was dead.
The picture of the woman covered in bruises came next. Brett didn’t need to study that one, he’d remembered the bruising clearly enough from the crime scene. But the picture he grabbed from the printer after that had his stomach dropping; the picture of Teresa Cavasos with no bruising.
This was the woman Paige had drawn in her sleep.
Brett forced himself to loosen his grip on the papers so he wouldn’t crush them as he walked back to his desk. What the hell was going on?
He had totally believed Paige when she had said she had no idea who the woman she’d drawn was. That it was just someone Paige had made up in her mind. But obviously she had to have known Teresa Cavasos. The image couldn’t have been anyone but her.
Brett grabbed his cell phone to punch out a text message to Paige, since he knew her security team had gotten her a replacement one this morning.
I need to talk to you ASAP. Call me.
It wasn’t very romantic, or even gentle, but Brett didn’t care. He needed to know how the hell Paige was connected to Ms. Cavasos.