by David Beers
Vince pulled his cell phone out and put it on his desk, leaving it on. Then, he stood and left the office.
Get her close to you.
Vince had arrived at Sherry’s house 30 minutes later. Her face was an odd mix of surprise and concern when she answered the door.
“Vince? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Do you mind if I come in for a second? I need to talk to you.”
Sherry hadn’t minded, at least not right then. She had, of course, minded very much later on.
And now, Vince’s work was done. The two agents standing beneath him would soon find what he’d done, and then the woman would come to him. That’s what really mattered here. Poor Sherry, she’d just been a means to that end. Vince felt sure, though, that her death wouldn’t be in vain.
She’ll get close to me now, he thought, though it wasn’t really clear who was doing the thinking. Maybe him. Maybe something else, but by that point it no longer mattered.
Emi pulled her phone from her jacket pocket, though she didn’t want to. It’d buzzed a moment before, but she’d simply reached in and sent the caller to voicemail. Thirty seconds later, it was ringing again, so they must really want something.
Emi had a vodka tonic sitting in front of her and the sun was just over the horizon.
She had stood in front of the building and watched Brett walk back inside; she remained there for maybe another five minutes, the cold air doing nothing to comfort her. Finally, she’d simply gone to her car, got in, and went home. From there, she’d pored a drink and that basic routine—drink, pour, drink—hadn’t stopped since.
She wasn’t drunk yet, but she’d be there soon enough, and Emi didn’t care.
She didn’t know if Brett had told Hartwell; she hadn’t heard from him at all.
Until now.
Because it was his phone number displayed across her screen.
Emi was still at her apartment; she’d have to leave soon, because the vodka bottle was nearly empty and she really didn’t want to switch to brown liquor.
She let the call go to voicemail. He’d made his choice this morning, and though it was the right choice, it had … hurt her? Maybe that wasn’t strong enough? Destroyed her? Perhaps a bit too strong, but somewhere in between. She loved Brett, too—they were brother and sister in this fucked up war they’d been given two years ago, and hearing him say that her career was over …
It hurt.
The phone started buzzing again. Emi hit answer and put it to her ear, hoping as she spoke that her voice sounded coherent. “Yeah?”
“There’s another body,” Brett said.
Emi froze for a second, her eyes fixed on the half empty glass in front of her.
“You there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Another body? Someone from that office?”
“Yeah. I need you to get over here. Can you drive?”
“Sure, I can drive,” Emi lied. “Where are you?”
“The same place.”
“Where are you headed then?” Emi asked. She wasn’t going back there today, drunk or not.
“To the parking deck.”
“What the fuck?” Emi asked. “The body is there?”
“Just get over here, Emi. I haven’t said anything to anyone yet, but Hartwell is going to be on a plane probably in the next hour, and if you’re not here, there’s going to be questions.”
Emi sighed. “Give me 30 minutes.”
“Hurry up. Plains and his team have already started.”
“Alright,” Emi said. She hung the phone up but didn’t stand from the table. Hours spent drinking, and now her partner was calling her back to the building he’d basically told her to leave this morning.
You can handle this, especially right now. Put a flask in your purse and sip it when you need. You were angry with him because you’re basically ending your career, but he’s giving you another chance. He told you to come, so get up and go to that parking deck.
It was absurd, and she knew it even while drunk. She should not be so afraid of that building, but that didn’t change the facts.
You told him you could handle it if you drank, and now you have, so get up.
Emi did as her mind said. She started a pot of coffee and then got dressed. She put on her FBI jacket, strapped on her tactical belt, and holstered her weapon. Lastly, she hung the badge around her neck.
She poured about three shots worth of vodka into a small flask she found in the back of her closet, then put that in her back pocket. After that, she went to the pot of coffee and poured a large cup, black.
She checked herself in the mirror. She actually looked better than she had this morning, despite still not having slept.
Most likely you’ll be an alcoholic. Your parents were. Their parents were. You got a lot going against ya, kid.
That was Abel, something he’d told her half in jest years and years ago. She didn’t have time to remember him, though, nor consider anymore why she was thinking about him. She had to get to a crime scene.
“How do I smell?” Emi whispered.
Brett didn’t look at her as they walked across the parking deck. “You chewing gum?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t spit it out when we get up there. I can’t smell any booze, but don’t take any chances. You know how this crew is.”
Emi said nothing and Brett knew that meant she agreed. She would hate chewing the gum, but if she’d been drinking all day, it might save her ass. He couldn’t smell anything at the moment, but that didn’t mean the techs wouldn’t. Their attention to detail was ridiculous.
“A woman arriving a bit late saw it,” Brett said, turning the conversation back to the murder. “She was taking the elevator down, and when the doors opened, the body was there.”
“Have you seen the body?” Emi asked.
He shook his head. They were coming up on it now. “No. The woman called the local police and it took about 30 minutes for everything to get routed to me. Plains got there first. Everything is sealed.”
“Has he given you any information?”
“No,” Brett said. “Keeping anyone from entering the deck has been a full time endeavor, and I side tracked myself with that while I waited for you to get here. Me showing up without you wouldn’t be well advised.”
Emi was quiet as the two reached the crime scene. They were on the top floor of the parking deck, and they’d passed at least five cops on the way up. Another 15 to 20 were surrounding the entire place. Brett understood people were pissed, but that was just too bad. No one was getting in here, not today and most likely not tomorrow either.
“Welcome, Agent Laurens, Agent Lichen …,” Plains said as they arrived, “… to hell.”
He didn’t look at them as they arrived, their echoing feet telling him all he needed to know. No one else would be coming over, not until the FBI gave permission.
Brett had spent most of the day splitting his attention between this gruesome case and what Emi had told him earlier in the morning. To say his mind was stressed, would be like saying Alaska could get chilly. Getting through the morning had consisted of simply trying to focus completely on the tasks at hand. Considering the wider implications could have wrecked him, making him useless.
Yet, when he looked into the elevator, all other thoughts vanished. The previous murders. Emi’s troubles. What he would have to do going forward. All of it fluttered off into the ether.
A large woman hung in the elevator. Thick ropes were tied to her wrists and neck, disappearing behind the tiles at the top of the elevator. She was naked, and perhaps more blood existed outside of her body than in.
Brett’s mouth opened as he stepped closer to Plains. Two techs were inside with the body, the other two hanging around outside, the parameters too close to squeeze in.
“Is there any skin left?” he heard Emi say from his right, her voice sounding completely sober—as if she’d never had a drink in her life.
“Doesn’t appear to be,” one of the techs said. “Even her eyelids have been torn off.”
The woman’s eyes stared forward, looking much wider than they should. In fact, her eyeballs looked like they sat inside two caverns, the usual flesh surrounding them almost completely gone. The eyelids were missing; she would be forced to stare at the inside of her casket until her eyeballs rotted away.
Brett swallowed.
The woman been skinned, from head to toe. Brett’s mind quickly snapped into a predator’s view, looking at all the details. Her nails were removed, raw red patches sitting in their place. He looked at her chest next—her breasts little more than flabby hunks of meat. Her nipples had been removed, and rough gashes lined the remaining flesh.
Her nose was almost nonexistent, and her cheeks thin things despite the extra weight she carried across her body.
A large pool of blood rested beneath her, and the techs couldn’t help but step in it.
“Any other footprints?” he asked.
“No, none when we arrived.”
“Two options,” Emi said, stepping closer to the elevator. “Either he hung her from inside the elevator shaft and never came down here, or the blood flow was so great it covered them up.”
Even if she was drunk, Brett understood Emi’s mind wouldn’t let her remain an observer.
“Do we have an ID?”
“What’s that?” Brett asked. He walked up to the edge of the elevator and squatted down.
“They didn’t want us wasting time figuring out who the victim was,” Plains said.
Brett blinked, almost unable to believe it.
The woman’s driver’s license was stapled onto her large stomach. Blood had dried across it, distorting much of the lettering. The face was clear, though, and so was the name.
“Cheryl Beatty,” Brett read.
“Demsworth’s secretary,” Emi said.
Abel and Emi
1990’s
He was 12 years old when he told her.
They’d been hanging out for nearly a year before he worked up the courage. Abel knew of Emi’s problems. She was … Well, open about it. Even then at that age, the cursing was rampant.
Those motherfuckers are at it again, she’d say, showing up on his doorstep without warning. At it again needed no more explanation for Abel. Drinking, cursing, and perhaps hitting each other.
He knew she didn’t share that stuff with anyone else. She would have walked that loop endlessly if he hadn’t been sitting on the curb that day, year after year, rain or shine, and never telling anyone.
Yet, Emi told him now, and he loved her for it. He loved that she trusted him with it, and the love was different than what he felt for his own sister. It wasn’t romantic (though, at 12, Abel didn’t understand the term), but he understood there was a difference between Emi and Mary. Mary and he, they were in this hell together through force. Emi had chosen to share her hell with him, and that’s something she didn’t have to do.
Abel wanted to tell her, and yet, didn’t. The desire to share came from … Well, at 12, he didn’t quite know. As an adult, Abel would share the information freely, not caring who believed him. At 12, to tell someone these things, he would be opening himself up in a way that he hadn’t before. He’d be sharing a part of himself that he knew people would think was insane, a part that his parents said no one could ever know about.
Abel knew they meant that too.
The day he decided to finally tell Emi, it weighed on him. What his parents said.
They didn’t talk about it every day. The dead only showed up sometimes, and rarely for Abel at that point.
“It’ll get worse,” his father had told him. “You see them from time to time, but they’ll come more regularly the older you get. And when I’m gone? Your mother and I? That’s when it’s really going to get bad.”
Abel’s father rarely showed any hint of his German ancestry. His father had been the one to change their last name, and he’d allowed no German in his house, doing his absolute best to strip Abel’s father of his accent.
Abel worried about what might happen when he told Emi. He knew that she’d worried about telling what went on in her house, but this was different.
“We will all be locked up,” his father had told him. “I mean that, Abel. They’ll lock all four of us up. Your mom. Me. Your sister. You. I suppose we could lie about it, if people found out, but once the words spreads … We can’t hide it forever.” His father had been sort of rambling for a second, but then focused, his eyes boring into Abel. “What I’m getting at, is that you can’t ever mention any of this. Not to teachers. Not to friends. What we see, what happens inside here, we’re the only ones who can know.”
Abel had told his father he understood, and he had. For years, Abel had kept the curse to himself, not even considering telling someone else.
And then Emi happened. Walking in that rainstorm, coming up on him without any warning. And she hadn’t left—for the past year, they’d been almost inseparable.
Yet, Abel had kept quiet … because he knew his father wasn’t lying. He knew what the world would do if they found out what his family believed. They would never see the dead. Emi would never see the dead, and that’s why part of him didn’t want to say anything. She would never see them, and therefore she might leave. She might run away, and it said a lot that that was what concerned Abel. He didn’t think about what would happen if she told someone, a teacher at school, maybe. The possibility of his whole family being locked up didn’t even enter his mind.
He was worried that Emi might leave.
That he might no longer have his friend.
And yet, there was a courage in Abel that forced him onward. An optimism that said she might stay, that she may not spook.
They hadn’t gone home that day, but went to the small creek that separated her neighborhood from his. The wooded section really wasn’t that large, but once they were inside it, it practically enveloped them. They could forget about the outside world—both of their houses, whatever happened at school.
They sat just off the creek, their asses in the dirt. Abel had picked up a pebble and was turning it over in his hand, his heart beating so hard it thumped inside his ears.
Emi had been bitching about something, really cursing up a storm, and normally Abel listened to every word of her screeds. That day, he hadn’t heard anything.
“I need you to stop talking,” he finally said.
She looked over at him, eyebrows raised, and a look like she might actually punch him.
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah, you have to stop. I’ve got to tell you something.”
Abel could see her out of his periphery, but he didn’t look her in the face. He didn’t want to look into her eyes. He saw her face change, though, morphing from annoyance to real concern.
“What is it?” she asked.
Abel sighed and leaned back, palming the pebble and laying his hands on his stomach.
“You’re going to think I’m insane, Emi. You’re going to stop talking to me for good.”
She turned toward him, folding her legs Indian-style, all previous conversation forgotten or at least shelved. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Abel stared up into the canopy above, looking at the sun light cast shadows across the trees and leaves. He was already here, so he couldn’t really turn back. There wasn’t any way to do that with Emi—he couldn’t say he had something to tell her, then not do it. She would hound him until the end of time. So, he was stuck.
“Hey, Earth to Abel. You hearing me?”
“I hear you,” he said.
“So what are you talking about.”
Abel closed his eyes, blocking out everything. He heard the creek still running in front of his feet, but he knew his words would block that out soon enough. The world would disappear when he started talking, and maybe, if he told it all, the world would disappear forever. Maybe he’d never have to open his
eyes and see that Emi was gone. That she’d run off at some point during his crazy story. That’s what he feared most at that point. More than the dead. More than his parents being locked up. He feared losing her.
“This is all true, Emi. You won’t believe it, but every single piece of it is true …”
And Abel started talking. The words were difficult at first, like digging into frozen ground, hitting ice over and over. The words thawed though, and they started to flow more freely. He kept talking. He didn’t start at the beginning—at least not at the true beginning, but his own. He told her when he first saw the dead. He told her about the conversation his father first had with him. He moved up through the present, describing what he’d seen and heard, as well as what his family had done.
But he found he wasn’t done.
He went back in time. He went back to his great-grandfather, a Nazi who’d tortured and killed. He didn’t know if it made sense, starting with his own life before showing where it all began, but that’s what he did.
Abel kept talking, getting every single piece of it out. Until there was nothing left, nothing to hide. Everything he knew about his family and the curse that held sway over them all was in the open. To be judged or feared or fled from.
For a 12 year old, perhaps there was no greater courage.
And when it was finished, Abel quit talking. He continued lying on his back and feeling the pebble in his hand. The sound of the river came back to him, filling his ears again, and he knew that he would have to open his eyes at some point. He knew that he couldn’t shut the world away forever; it’d been a silly wish. He’d broken his promise to his father and now he had to come back to this world and see how bad things would get.
He heard nothing but the creek. Not Emi moving nor even breathing, and a sudden surety came over him then: she’d left in the middle of his spiel. She’d left while he was talking and he’d been so engrossed that he hadn’t heard her. Abel was alone now, with only the creek’s endless babble to keep him company.
He was just as alone as he’d been a year ago, before they’d ever met.
