Jake had been careful not to let on just how much he knew about Aza, but he couldn’t always control his emotional responses when it came to her. What troubled Jake wasn’t that the staff at SCPC thought Aza could force people to do her bidding, but that he knew Aza herself thought she had similar abilities. It was how she claimed the actions of her father took place. At her desire, like she was some supernatural puppet master. As far as Jake knew, he and Dr. Green were the only ones who knew that part of the story. And with the good doctor’s demise at Aza’s hand, that left Jake as the only survivor that knew Aza’s story. At least as far as she saw it. It wasn’t until Jaina started relating strange occurrences surrounding Aza at SCPC that he began to believe how dangerous Aza might actually be.
“No one is capable of what you’re claiming, but Aza is clearly a danger to herself. She belongs at a psychiatric facility. That’s all.” He couldn’t tell Jaina what he suspected. Jake took a sip of his coffee. Caffeine or not, he’d never sleep tonight. “What’s Gerry Switzer say about how she did it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jake’s blood pressure spiked again. If he wasn’t careful, he’d pass out. “Did you come here with nothing for me?”
Jaina shook her head and again surveyed her surroundings before answering. “That’s not how I meant it. I don’t know because he’s gone, too. He wasn’t at his post when the others went down with the cupcake. He won’t answer his phone and no one knows where he went. Administration thinks he just got fed up with the job and quit suddenly. He wouldn’t be the first person to leave in such a way. and he was always a bit…off.”
“So no one followed up on him? Call his friends, relatives? Check his place?”
Jaina shook her head. “No. I’m sure they will eventually, though. An investigation will be forthcoming considering a patient escaped. Protocol and all.”
“You have Switzer’s address, I hope.”
Jaina reached into her purse and pulled out a stack of papers. She slid it across the table. “I copied his personnel file as well as all the notes on Aza since your last visit. There’s not much there.”
Jake scooped up the papers and flipped through them.
“She made him do it,” Jaina said. “Gerry, I mean. He’d been on her post longer than anyone else. Pulling lots of overtime as well. Overnights, holidays. But no one said anything about it because at least it meant they wouldn’t have to get near her.”
Jake leaned over the documents and stared straight into Jaina’s eyes. “She’s not a goddamn monster, Jae.”
Jaina stared back, equally as brazen. “You can’t lie to me. And you damn sure can’t lie to yourself.” She reached out and grabbed his hands. Jake thought to recoil, but her touch grounded him and released some of the tension in his body. Not all. Not even most, but some. “I’ve been in your pocket for nearly four years, Jake Anderson. Don’t think for a fucking second that you can just back away from me now. Yes, Aza is a little girl. Traumatized and all, but you and I both know there’s more to it than that. I’ve seen her change people. She crawls into your mind and pulls you into a darkness that doesn’t make any sense. She’s beyond human.”
It was a strange relationship Jake had with Jaina. From the very beginning when he’d separated her out from all the others at SCPC. He’d begun by paying her in cash to ferret out every bit of information relating to Aza that she could. But after a while, the currency had changed. He still slipped her cash on occasion, but now they largely traded in emotions, physical comfort, and simple togetherness. On some level, Jake trusted her, at least as much as he trusted anyone, but he could never be sure if it was genuine or merely a necessity. She’d been his link to Aza. A conduit to the answers he so desperately wanted. None of it made any sense. Not Jaina. Not Aza. Not his obsession with her. But what else did Jake have left in the world, but to continue along the dark path he’d set out on four years ago when he’d stared at two charred corpses chained to a sleazy motel room bed while a soot-stained eight-year-old smiled at him like she’d won the world?
“I have some things to do, but maybe you can come by later tonight,” Jake said.
“Okay, but I want the truth. No more secrets and bullshit from you.”
Jake smiled. He never tired of Jaina’s brashness. “Okay. Truth.” Jake had no idea whether he meant it or not, but it was the only answer he could give in the moment.
Chapter Four
Friday 4:13 p.m.
The address Jaina had given Jake led him to a rundown apartment complex on the edge of town. Like a discarded piece of trash, the building sat alone among unkempt oaks and creeping vines that covered nearly all of the once red brick. The vines likely did more to hold the building together than the mortar. It was the kind of place that accepted multiple currencies: flesh, chemical, and otherwise. There were over a hundred units, but Jake had his eyes on just one. 37b.
Like a proper policeman, Jake stood tall at the door and knocked loudly. He waited just one breath before pounding again. The apartment beyond the door remained still and silent. Jake leaned to the side and tried to peer through the off-white curtains, but they were drawn too tightly together and were too thick to see through.
Fighting to keep his emotions holstered, Jake looked back at his car and the surrounding parking lot. He’d been in such a hurry, he’d forgotten to fully vet the area. He was usually so meticulous about his approaches to unknown situations. He used to be so careful. Jake narrowed his eyes on his own car, a mid-model sedan with more miles on it than any car should have. From his perch on the second-floor landing, he could see that the driver’s side bumper was severely damaged. He couldn’t for the life of him remember how it’d happened. He used to be so careful.
A stiff wind stirred Jake, and he turned back to his primary objective.
He knocked again, this time using his boot. The door quivered, the sound echoing through the open corridor and stairwell. Jake growled and headed back to the ground floor. He needed to get in that apartment. Even if Switzer wasn’t home, Jake was sure he could get a good feel for the situation by conducting a bit of snooping. At ground level, he stopped by the reception area. He momentarily considered strong-arming whatever staff member was on duty to produce a key for Switzer’s place. Jake had little doubt he could manage the feat, but the less people who knew he was there, the better. He was working off the book and it’d be better to keep it that way. The last thing he wanted to have do was try and explain why he was chasing down a lead on a missing girl he shouldn’t have been keeping track of in the first place.
Jake headed for his car and popped the trunk. He opened it and retrieved his .38 Colt Detective Special snub nose revolver and a small leather bag. The bag he tossed over his shoulder, the pistol he tucked in the back of his waistband. He slammed the trunk shut and leaned against it.
“What the hell am I doing?” he whispered.
What he was doing was following his instincts. Just as he had by keeping tabs on Aza for the past four years. Something deep inside told Jake that she wasn’t just some traumatized child. They’d conducted hundreds of tests during her stay at SCPC, and a few things had become painfully clear. Aza was smarter than anyone else that had ever come through their doors, with an IQ off the charts: genius- and savant-level smart. She was also equally unstable. Jake had copies of every recorded incident; 57 acts of violence toward another, 89 acts of theft, and 150 acts of medical non-compliance. Most from solitary confinement. And that was just what the staff knew about. And all in four years.
Jake would do everything he could to find Aza. Not to protect her, but to protect the public. He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but Jake couldn’t help but wonder what kind of evil had crawled into Aza. To hear Jaina talk, it was the Devil himself that lived in Aza’s skin. But Jake knew all too well that man could inflict far more evil upon a child than the Devil could ever dream of.
Reassuring himself, Jake returned to apartment 37b and set to picking the lock with the too
ls he kept stashed in his leather bag. It’d been a while since he’d sharpened his lock-picking skills, but after a couple of amateur fumbles, his muscle memory kicked in. After another couple of minutes, the cheap lock disengaged.
“You still got it, you old dog,” Jake said, returning his tools, and ignoring the tremble in his fingers.
Jake shouldered his bag and drew his pistol as he eased open the door.
The scent of neglect hit Jake in the face and set him coughing. He stepped in, kicked the door shut, and fought to keep quiet as he dry-heaved.
Food, clothing, and garbage were everywhere in the cramped space. From beneath the squalor, furniture rose up like mountains, giving some semblance of what had once been. The only clear path led from the front door toward the back of the apartment, presumably to a bedroom and bathroom. Jake kept his pistol up and took slow and deliberate steps along said path, scanning back and forth. Anything could have hidden in the heaps of waste. How could anyone live like this? Jaina spoke of Switzer’s propensity to work an obscene amount of hours, but even so, the interior of his apartment showed the care of someone who gave absolutely zero fucks when it came to basic hygiene.
Jake stepped past the kitchenette and leaned around the next doorway, revealing a small bathroom. Jake gagged and recoiled as the strong scent of shit and piss wafted over him. He leaned against the kitchen counter, sending a stack of dirty dishes clattering to the floor. He cursed and tightened his grip on his pistol, aiming it down the short, dark hallway. Only one door remained, and it was shut. Jake held his breath, just as much for silence as to save himself from the stench for a few moments.
When nothing burst from the room at the end of the hallway or erupted from the wreckage around him, Jake groaned and continued onward. Perhaps he had lost his edge. No one stayed young forever.
He found the door locked, but it was a simple interior door knob and popped open with a slight shoulder nudge. It was quicker than picking it would have been, and if no one had been alerted to his presence so far, he was likely safe for a bit longer. Jake pushed the door open with his foot and leveled his pistol.
“Shit,” Jake said softly. A larger exclamation was warranted, but it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Jake took a single step into the room. It was as far as he could move without stepping on blood. A portly man, bald, and naked, lay splayed out in the middle of the floor, both forearms opened up like Daphne Miller’s babysitter’s—Jake had forgotten her name. Blood covered nearly every inch of the bedroom that was only slightly larger than Jake’s walk-in closet. Jake only gave the body a passing glance, his attention more firmly grabbed by the words painted on the opposing wall. It was messy work, painting with one’s own blood, Jake imagined, but most of the words were legible enough to read. Not that Jake needed all the words to know what had been written.
Some people are just born broken.
Some people aren’t people at all.
You know me for I know you.
“Oh, fucking shit,” Jake said, louder this time.
The words seemed to dance across the wall. Whoever Gerry Switzer was—assuming it was him on the floor—he shouldn’t have known those words. Jake knew the words—at least the first part—but the only other living person who should have was Aza. Jake had kept track of Aza for four years, using Jaina to feed him everything Aza did, wrote, said, thought. He’d never seen reference to the words scrawled on the wall. They’d been in her original journal entries, but nowhere else. She’d made her father say them before she burned him and her mother alive. And, as far as Jake knew, she hadn’t uttered them since.
Jake dropped to a knee long enough to give the corpse a quick look-over at a distance. He shook his head, stood, and pulled out his phone.
“Jake?” Jaina asked, picking up after the first ring.
“Yeah, listen, I need you to come over now. I’ll be home in a bit.”
“I was just about to head that way now, anyway,” Jaina said.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I—never mind. Everything all right? You didn’t seem so interested in seeing me when we met earlier.”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
Jaina hesitated before answering. “Ok… Well, I’ll see you soon, then.”
“And Jaina?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you mean it when you said you wanted the truth? No more bullshit?”
“Jake, you’re scaring me a little. What’s up?”
Jake hung up and made for the door without responding. Before he opened it, he stopped and turned back to the cluttered dumpster heap that was Switzer’s apartment. “Aza?” he asked.
The garbage, clothes, and old food gave no reply. Jake cursed himself. Aza wasn’t some horror movie monster. She wasn’t going to spring from the corner all claws and teeth. She didn’t have superhuman abilities. She wasn’t the Devil.
And she couldn’t make a fully grown man kill himself and dictate her delusional mantra on his bedroom wall.
Except Jake knew that was exactly what she had done.
Chapter Five
Friday 4:13 p.m.
Aza waved as the cab drove off. She was still laughing. The driver had been such a cordial man, driving her all the way from Seaside City to Port Dimmock, over an hour away. And he hadn’t even charged her for the fare, despite the pocketful of cash she’d taken from both the old man’s house and the Millers’. The driver had, at first, thought it curious or perhaps a little concerning that a twelve-year-old girl in such disarray—she hadn’t had the occasion to procure new clothing yet—would be traveling so far on her own. It didn’t take long for Aza to convince him, however. After that, he spent a vast majority of the ride singing at the top of his lungs and telling such fabulous jokes to entertain her. It had made the hour pass by in a single moment of bliss.
Now, standing on the sidewalk outside Mama’s Diner, Aza took pause to examine herself. She had slept away more of the morning than she would have cared to and hadn’t been able to let her clothes soak long enough in bleach to fully remove Daphne’s blood. And they were hospital-issue garments to begin with, plain fabric pants and a simple T-shirt. They’d been light blue when she’d left SCPC, but were now tie-dyed a rusty shade of red. And she was barefoot, though that was by design. Shoes made one numb to their journey.
A woman clad in an apron and hairnet stepped out from the alley next to the diner. Aza could feel the woman’s concern even before the woman raced up to her.
“Oh, honey,” the woman said, quickly stubbing out a cigarette and kneeling in front of Aza. “Are you all right? You’re hardly dressed. Where are your parents?”
“I killed them,” Aza said, hoping it’d stop the hailstorm of questions.
The woman frowned. “I’m sorry?”
Aza stared into the woman’s eyes as if she meant to climb into her soul. “I am rather cold, standing out here. Hungry, too.”
The woman nodded. “Oh, I’m sure you are, my dear. Come, let’s get you inside where it’s warm. I’ll get you something to eat and then we can see about getting you home.”
“I’d like that,” Aza said.
The woman stood, took Aza’s hand, and led her into Mama’s Diner.
“I’ll sit there,” Aza said, pointing to a corner booth, away from a majority of the patrons. The place was more crowded than Aza cared for. Living in solitary for so long, Aza had forgotten what it was like to be watched. She didn’t care for it.
The woman leaned over the table. “Is there anything you like to eat? What’s your favorite?”
“Your name’s Dottie,” Aza said, nodding at the woman’s name tag. “That’s a dumb name. I think I’ll call you Grace.”
“Oh, uh, okay then.”
“The biggest pile of chocolate chip pancakes you can make, lots of syrup, and a cookie. Not a sugar cookie or gingersnap or anything like that. Something with chocolate.”
Grace nodded. “Hungry, are you? Sure, I’ll see what I can
do. Is there someone I can call for you?”
Aza shook her head. “Not yet.”
Grace laid her hand over Aza’s. “Whatever you need, dear.”
Grace turned to leave, but stopped when Aza called, “Oh, and Grace? If you call anyone, I will kill you,” Aza whispered. She punctuated the statement with her sweetest smile.
Grace said nothing and hastened away.
Aza didn’t imagine the woman would listen to her. Any rational adult seeing a girl of Aza’s stature walk into a diner dressed as she was, in a state such as she was, wouldn’t hesitate to make numerous phone calls to the authorities. Aza knew she was taking a gamble. She should have seen to getting new clothes first, but she was just so damned hungry. They didn’t serve pancakes of any sort at the hospital, much less chocolate chip ones. For four years, the most exciting thing Aza had eaten was the stale cupcake the staff would bring her on every birthday. It was almost a shame that she’d missed this year’s, but Gerry—ol’ Gere Bear, as she called him—hadn’t been doing so well. Aza hadn’t wanted to risk her escape for a no-good cupcake given out of guilt and misplaced care. She wondered for a moment how ol’ Gere Bear was doing now that she’d left him. Likely not well, but what did she care? By tomorrow, she’d probably forget his name.
Across from Aza’s booth, a man and woman were enjoying their lunch. The woman had her back to Aza, but the man kept sneaking glances in Aza’s direction. Aza stared back, locking eyes with him. Aza used to think she could step into another person’s mind, but that had really only proven true with her father. Even with Dr. Green, she had merely been able to feel what he was feeling. And thinking. There was that funny business with her dreams that she could never quite remember as well. But what she could do was slip into what another person was feeling. Sometimes she could change it. Make an emotion more pronounced or subdued. With some, she could change it completely. It had been that way with ol’ Gere Bear. A bit brainless, that one.
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 3
