Eye of the Storm

by Sara Reinke

  The words on the board of regents for the Metropolitan Free Public Library caught his attention in one of the biographical pieces on Sinclair. Vicki worked at the Metro Free Public Library as the acquisitions director. In fact, a quick glance at the caller-I.D. display on his phone revealed that was where she was calling from, her desk at work.

  “That’s good,” she said. “I was worried. What a shame they have to cut their honeymoon short.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, skimming the article without really listening to her. “Vicki, do you know a guy by the name of Arthur Sinclair?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “He’s on our board of regents,” she said at length, sounding somewhat puzzled by the unexpected turn in conversation.

  He was looking at a photocopied, black-and-white newspaper image, a picture from a library regents’ Christmas ball three years earlier. In the photo, a man in a tuxedo, identified by cutline as Arthur Sinclair was laughing and smiling with someone identified as Howard Minz and Robert Allen, the city’s mayor.

  “How about Bob Allen?” he asked, raising a thoughtful brow.

  “The mayor? He is, too,” Vicki said. Her voice had grown somewhat curt, as if she realized his distraction and was annoyed by it. “Look, Paul, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about the other night. You were right. You should have a say-so in the girls’ lives outside of your visitation with them. I should have talked to you about M.K. dating before telling her it was okay. I’m sorry about that.”

  The city had sold the three properties to Arthur Sinclair for a dollar apiece. Sinclair and the mayor sat together on the library board. A little good-ol’-boy networking happening on the side? he wondered. Why else would the city sell even piece-of-shit property so cheap?

  “…do you think?” Vicki was saying.

  Paul blinked, snapped from his thoughts. “What?”

  He heard the sharp huff of her breath over the phone line, and winced. Ah, Christ.

  “You weren’t even listening, were you?” Vicki said, her voice soft but cutting. This was her precursor-to-a-fight tone. He remembered it well. “You weren’t paying attention to a single thing I just said.”

  “Yes, I was,” he said. “I just have forty different things sitting on my desk and the moment, and I just walked in the door, and I haven’t―”

  “It’s always something with you,” she said. “Isn’t it, Paul?”

  “That’s not―” he began, but she cut him off.

  “You didn’t listen in our counselling sessions all last year, either,” she snapped. “What did you do there the whole time? Look out the goddamn window and think about your work? That’s all you ever think about―all you ever thought about. It sure as hell wasn’t thinking about me or the girls.”

  It felt like she’d kicked him in the balls. His stomach tightened reflexively, and again, that deep, insidious pain seized him. “That’s not fair,” he whispered, but it was fair and he knew it. He hadn’t been listening to her. Not then, and not for a long time. It was par for the course with him. “Vicki, please…”

  “It’s your weekend with the girls,” she said. “Try not to forget about that, okay? They’ll be ready at six.”

  “Vic…” he began helplessly, but she hung up on him.

  * * *

  The day only grew worse from there.

  But before it did, Paul tried to distract himself from the piece-of-shit feeling his conversation with Vicki had left with him. Hell, when doesn’t a conversation with Vic wind up with me feeling like shit anymore? he thought, returning his attention to the papers Jason had printed for him.

  The website from which Jason had pulled the information was printed at the very top of each sheet. Curious, Paul turned to his keyboard, opened his web browser and typed in the address. It was the city’s Property Value Assessment website. From its online database, he―or any other Joe Shmoe in town―could run a basic check on a piece of property, to ascertain its appraised taxable value. For a nominal subscription fee, someone could access even more detailed information, such as a history of deed transfers. This was a service targeted primarily toward investors and realtors, but Paul shifted his weight and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. He could damn well use it, too.

  He pulled out the city’s gold card and paid for a year’s subscription. All in the line of duty, he thought, smirking wryly as the credit card payment processed online. Once he was able to access the advanced search window of the site, he typed in Greater Metropolitan Historical Preservation, then selected Deed or Title Search and hit Go!

  To his surprise, a list of more than three dozen properties resulted. All had been titled to Greater Metropolitan Historical Preservation within the last three years―all former tax-forfeiture foreclosures and all turned over for pennies on the dollar by Metro Government. All but five had since been resold or retitled, including the three properties Brenda had identified near the dump site of Melanie Geary’s body. The others were now listed under the titled ownership of Keswick Investment Realty Group.

  “Huh,” Paul said, frowning slightly. He looked from the computer screen down toward the papers detailing the three houses again. Each one had a small photo included in the property descriptions; tiny, grainy, poorly reproduced, black-and-white images that depicted the homes more as hulking shadows than anything discernable.

  “Huh,” Paul said again, his frown deepening. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it, his veteran police instincts stirring from dormancy to tickle and prod at his brain. He tapped his fingertips against the pages. Something wasn’t right. But did it have anything to do with Melanie Geary’s murder?

  He closed his eyes, and as soon as he did, a stark, startling image

  memory

  lanced through his brain, forcing him to jerk reflexively, to suck in a hissing breath through his teeth.

  Going down a long flight of crumbling concrete stairs…descending from shadows into full and heavy darkness…cutting through it with the broad, pale beam of a flashlight…watching the splash of illumination bounce and dance off the walls and stairs as I go down…

  In his mind, Paul saw

  remembered

  reaching the bottom of this long flight of stairs, of finding himself in a long, narrow corridor lined on both sides by gaping, darkened doorways.

  One…two…three… He counted as he walked past them, fallen plaster and concrete crunching underneath the soles of his shoes. He imagined

  remembered

  that he could hear a strange, soft sound from somewhere in the darkness, from one of the rooms on his left as he approached

  the sixth room…it’s the sixth room

  like fingertips scrabbling weakly in gravel, a peculiar, quiet scratching sound overlaid with a sodden, soft choking.

  Aimee

  He imagined

  remembered

  coming to the threshold of the sixth door on his left, turning the flashlight to direct its beam into the room beyond. He could see the girl from his dreams inside

  Aimee

  strapped into the brutal chair, more dead than alive, the piano wire garrotte drawn so tightly around her throat, it had cut through her flesh, sinking deeply. Her face was purple, nearly blackened with the need for oxygen, and she was incapable of doing anything more than gasping softly, moistly, feebly for breath, her head craned back toward the ceiling, her plum-colored, swollen lips opened widely in desperation.

  Her fingers were gone. All except for her thumbs. They had all been cut off, leaving bloodsmears on the wooden chair arms, puddles of it congealing on the concrete floor.

  I’m here to cut off her thumbs, he thought, turning the flashlight beam to the other side of the room, to the stainless steel surgical table on wheels, and the tray full of cutting implements there, the industrial garden shears.

  I’m here to

  Paul jerked at the sound of sharp voices from beyond his office, his mind snapping immediately from his

  memories

&n
bsp; reverie. He heard footsteps walking swiftly, heavily toward his door, and through the window, saw Jason rise to his feet behind his desk. Paul watched his mouth form the words, May I help

  and then his office door swung open wide, banging sharply off the wall. Detective Sergeant Dan Pierson stood on Paul’s threshold, his brows furrowed, his doughy fet set in a disagreeable frown. “You got some damn nerve, Frances,” he said.

  For a moment, Paul blinked stupidly at him, convinced that Pierson somehow knew what he’d been thinking about―and worse, knew that Paul had dreamed of Melanie Geary’s death in similar, horrific detail.

  As if I’d lived it. Sweet Christ, as if I’m the person who did that to her.

  He struggled to find something to say, choked somewhat, but Pierson strode boldly forward, continuing with what was apparently a well-rehearsed diatribe.

  “You know what it says on the door to this office, Frances?” he asked. “Public Affairs, in big fucking letters. Public Affairs. Not Homicide. You keep your goddamn nose out of my case files.”

  Paul blinked at him again. It wasn’t me! he wanted to shout. I didn’t hurt those girls, I swear to Christ! It couldn’t have been me! I…I could never…

  But then he remembered―the missing cigarettes from his pack on the night he’d dreamed of abducting Aimee, the sleepwalking incidents, last night’s drive, the dreams that felt more and more like memories.

  I could never… he thought again, remembering the taste and sensation of kissing Aimee every bit as powerfully and poignantly as he did kissing Susan Vey. He remembered the warmth of her mouth, the texture of her skin, the feel of the stun gun in his hand, the pressure against his palm as he had used the steel shears to cut through flesh and bone.

  He felt a tickling in his nose and drew his hand to his face just as a sudden, startling stream of blood spilled from his right nostril.

  “…don’t care what Brenda might have told you, I am handling this case in my own goddamn―Jesus, Frances, you’re bleeding!” Pierson exclaimed, surprised out of his diatribe.

  Paul grabbed a wad of napkins out of his desk drawer and shoved them against his nose. He scuttled to his feet, shoving his chair back, and leaned forward, trying to keep blood from spattering on his clothes. He watched in stunned, somewhat numb fascination as it fell in fat, skittering droplets against the papers on his desk, the property descriptions Jason had printed out for him.

  That’s how it was when I cut off their fingers…a slow pattering at first against the ground, growing faster and faster until it flowed like a stream…

  Paul uttered a hoarse cry, slapping the papers from his desk with his free hand, sending them scattering. Pierson shied back, his eyes flown wide, and Jason appeared in the office doorway, startled and alarmed.

  “Paul!” Jason cried, shoving past Pierson and hurrying to Paul’s side. His hands fluttered helplessly around Paul’s head, and he made weird, anxious, hiccuping sounds at the sight of the blood, as if he might hyperventilate or vomit. “Jesus Christ, Pierson, what did you do?”

  “Me?” Pierson blinked stupidly for a moment, then frowned. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing, Scrappy. He just―”

  “I’m reporting you to Captain Brady!” Jason cried, still hovering around Paul, his hands slapping and flapping as he tried to get Paul to sit down. In that moment, with his voice shrill and edged with panic, he sounded idiotically like one of Paul’s daughters in the throes of a sibling altercation: I’m telling on you!

  He snorted, seized with the sudden, ridiculously inappropriate urge to laugh. He choked on blood at the effort.

  “You can’t come in here and punch him in the nose!” Jason exclaimed at Pierson. “He’s a lieutenant! Another department or not, he’s your superior!”

  “Punch him in the nose?” Pierson said, his eyes flying wide. “Now wait a goddamn―!”

  “It’s alright,” Paul told Jason, though around the napkins and his fingertips, the words came out sounding, iss awwrie. He drew the napkins back and took a tentative sniff, the bleeding staved. For now, he thought. “It’s alright, Jason,” he said again, more clearly. “He didn’t hit me. My nose just started bleeding.” He spared Pierson a glance. “If he’d hit me, he’d be on the floor.”

  Pierson sneered, but before he could quip out some smart-ass remark, Paul nodded toward the door. “Get out of here, Pierson,” he said.

  “You butt in my case again, and I’m taking it to the Captain,” Pierson said, but he was stepping back, moving toward the door.

  “You do what you need to,” Paul replied. He met Pierson’s gaze evenly for a long moment, and then the other man turned and stomped off, muttering under his breath.

  “I’m alright, Jason,” Paul said, shrugging off his partner’s persistent, fluttering hands.

  “I thought he hit you,” Jason said. “He came storming in here, spouting and cussing and just barged through the doorway. And then, when I saw the blood―!”

  “I know,” Paul said, sniffling again. “But it’s alright.”

  He fought the urge to tell Jason a bug had flown up his nose, as he’d told Emma only the day before. Judging by the ashen, stricken expression on Jason’s face, Paul doubted he would find it as humorous or reassuring as Emma had.

  He went to the men’s room and washed his face, splashing cold water over and over as much to clear his mind as to bathe away the blood. He looked up at his reflection in a mirror, patting his face dry with a paper towel. I’m not going crazy, he told himself. I’m not a murderer. I’m not the one who killed Melanie Geary, who is hurting this girl, Aimee. There is no Aimee. I’m just having bad dreams, that’s all.

  I’m not a murderer.

  * * *

  “I’m leaving,” he told Jason as he walked past the younger man’s desk, returning to his office.

  “What?” Jason asked, blinking stupidly, pausing as he typed on his computer keyboard.

  Paul went into his office. He fished his keyring out of his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out his 9-millimeter service pistol and shoulder holster, and shrugged his way out of his blazer.

  Jason appeared in the doorway just as he drew the leather harness over his shoulders. “But we have a meeting scheduled for lunchtime with the mayor’s press secretary,” Jason said. “I emailed you about…” His voice faded, his eyes widening with something akin to childlike wonder when he spied the pistol. “What are you doing?”

  “Putting on my gun,” Paul replied, tugging his sportcoat back into place over the holster. “That’s what cops do.”

  And I’m a cop―I’m a goddamn police officer, not a murderer.

  “But I…” Jason said. “I just…where are you going?”

  “Field trip,” Paul said. He genuflected and began to gather up the fallen papers he’d knocked to the floor. The sight of blood spattered against the pages from his nose disturbed him, and he wiped at it with his fingertips, smearing it.

  “Field trip?” Jason asked as Paul rose to his feet, folding the papers in half and stuffing them down into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I…I don’t…what about the mayor’s press secretary?”

  Paul clapped him amicably on the shoulder as he walked past. “Give him my regards,” he said. “You can handle it, kid. I have every confidence in you.”

  He left the younger man standing alone, sputtering and wide-eyed.

  * * *

  “You up for some field work, Dr. Wheaton?” Paul asked, leaning through Brenda’s office doorway and grinning winsomely.

  She looked up from a mountain of paperwork, looking both studious and irresistably sexy in a pair of narrow-framed, tortoise-shell glasses. She smiled when she saw him, but looked puzzled still the same. “Field work?”

  He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the sheets Jason had printed out. He waggled them at her in beckon, in promise. Dan Pierson would shit a brick to find out Paul was nosing around in his case again, but Paul didn’t give a damn.

&n
bsp; I need to get inside these houses, he thought. It’s the only way I can prove I’m not going insane―that I’m not a murderer. I need to find where Melanie Geary was killed.

  “A little house hunting,” he told Brenda, dropping her a wink. “I’ve got three in mind I think you’ll love. What do you say, Brenda? You game?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I don’t think we should be doing this, Paul,” Brenda said, as they shrugged their way into white Tyvek jumpsuits. The outfits―dubbed “bunnysuits” by the city’s hazmat squad―covered their clothes, and would protect them from lead paint chips, asbestos and other crumbling debris.

  “I mean, besides the fact we don’t have a warrant, I don’t think you should be going in here after your nose was bleeding earlier,” she said.

  They stood in the overgrown, weed- and garbage-filled back yard of the one of the dilapidated old houses. The back door was boarded over, but the plywood was flimsy and weatherworn, held loosely in place by a single padlock that could be easily pried loose with a crowbar. Which Paul had happened to bring along. “We don’t need a warrant,” he said. “We have probable cause―the asbestos and lead paint chips you found in the victim’s airway.”

  Which was a crock of shit, and they both knew it. Pleading probable cause as the grounds for their trespassing wouldn’t hold water in a court of law, but Paul figured they could cross that particular and problematic bridge when and as they reached it.

  In the meantime, he hadn’t planned on telling Brenda about his nosebleed, but he’d been stupid to think he could slip the bloodstains on the paper past her―a trained medical examiner. She’d noticed them right away when she’d looked over the property histories, and had known immediately that the brown smudges were blood.

  “The nosebleed was nothing,” he told her, doing his best to award her a disarming smile. “I told you, it’s allergies. This time of the year drives my sinuses nuts. Besides…” He slipped a particulate-filter mask in place over the lower quadrant of his face, pinching the slim metal bridge across his nose and tugging against the elastic straps drawn tautly toward his ears to secure it. “You’ve got us covered, remember?”