The end of her cigarette bobbed as she nodded, her face expressionless. “Looks like.”
People started to gather around Connie, and from the steady hum of conversation I gathered no one else had actually seen him fall. Several people stood examining the broken and bowed part of the railing, shaking their head and muttering to themselves about the state of the building. More people appeared in the stairwell to join the discussion, but I noticed not a single person had gone to check on the body. Apparently 9B hadn’t been all that popular.
A sudden thought struck me, and I leaned toward Connie, my fingers gripping the railing so hard the rust scraped my palms. “Anyone call the cops?”
The answer didn’t come from Connie, but from a voice behind her.
“You won’t last long around here if cops are your solution to everything.”
“You planning on tossing him in a dumpster?” I snapped back, then shifted to one side to get a better look at the speaker.
A man was leaning against the wall, his arms folded loosely over his muscled chest, his attention so fully on me that I caught my breath. He looked like he could have been the drummer in a hard rock band—tattoos covering his bare arms, dark brown hair that was slightly overgrown in a careless messy look, rough stubble on his tanned jaw, with beat up jeans and a torn t-shirt to complete the image.
He was watching me with an intensity I found unsettling, his dark green eyes studying me with obvious interest, and I raised my eyebrow at him. There was a pause before I was rewarded with a slow, disarming smile. His hand dropped to his pocket and I found my gaze following its movement as he tugged a battered silver lighter free and began turning it over in his hands. I waited for the inevitable pack of cigarettes to follow, but nothing else appeared, just the slow play of the lighter through his fingers. Then, as I watched, he flipped the lid open and ran his thumb over the wheel, sparking a flame to life.
The sound of sirens in the distance caused a new commotion in the halls—obviously someone had decided to call for help. I glanced down at the body, and when I looked back up the man at the wall was gone. I blinked. The crowds were magically thinning at the sirens, scurrying back into their dark apartments like roaches when the light flips on. Within seconds, the only people left were those too nosey to hide or too drunk to care.
Connie turned towards me then, a key dangling from fingers yellowed with smoke, her voice impassive.
“So, you want it?”
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
It was, by far, the shittiest apartment building I’d ever stepped foot in—and that was before the dead guy in the stairwell. Still, I reached out to take the keys from Connie, who waved off my offers to pay with a mutter about finding her later, already on her way down the stairs to meet the cops and paramedics flooding into the tiny lobby. Frantically shouted orders were echoing through the halls, which seemed a bit unnecessary considering from nine floors up, even I could see 9B wasn’t getting up again. Paramedics swarmed his motionless form, shaking their heads and giving way after only a few minutes for a uniformed police officer to draw a chalk outline around the body, then cover it with a black plastic sheet.
The sense of urgency passed now that everyone had confirmed that 9B was indeed dead, and the activity level was dropping at an amazing rate. Two officers began lazily stringing yellow crime scene tape inconveniently across the lobby while the rest loitered behind it, talking in small groups. I was just about to lock myself inside my apartment when a new person walked through the doors. The sudden perk into action from the police officers on the scene caught my attention, and I watched for a few moments, amused at the commotion that sprung up around him. I picked him out as a detective based simply off the suit he wore in a sea of blue officers’ uniforms, and I found something comforting in the easy way he walked in and took over—a feeling that things were now under control. I wasn’t a big fan of cops, but just then, with the sound of screams still echoing in my mind, I was thankful for him.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs above me, and I turned to see a girl coming down at a half run, her attention focused on the activity below. She had dark olive skin and black hair cut short and spiked up in the kind of easy, careless look that can only be achieved with genetics, no matter what the commercials say. Her steps slowed when she reached the 9th floor landing and spotted me, her gaze running over me once before raising a hand in greeting.
“Hey,” she offered cheerfully, then grimaced and pointed below. “Pretty fucking gruesome down there. What happened?”
I shrugged and pointed at the bent railing behind me. “I guess he fell.”
Her brown eyes widened slightly, and her hand came off the railing where she’d been leaning, backing away. “Nine floors? Holy shit, that’s no joke. Did you see it?”
“No,” I lied. As far as I was concerned, that was going to be my answer no matter who asked. Including the cops. “I came out when I heard the sirens.”
She carefully re-approached the railing, and we both looked down. “Look at Connie,” she pointed at the bath robed figure hovering off to one side, the constant smoke from her cigarette creating a dense haze over the scene, “She’s loving this.” Her gaze traveled from the key in my hand to the door to 9A. “Just move in?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Sort of—” The door was still ajar, and I pressed the flat of my hand against it to swing it wide, revealing the tiny empty apartment. “I really don’t think I’m staying long, though.”
It was enough of an invitation to take a look, which she did—poking her head inside. “I didn’t plan on staying long either,” she said. “They don’t do shit in this building, I did all the repairs in my place myself.” She hesitated, glancing into the empty apartment and then back at me. I knew I didn’t look great—I’d been wearing the same three outfits for two weeks and washing up in gas station bathrooms. I expected her to grimace again, but instead her expression softened slightly.
“You look like you could use a beer,” she decided, “Want to come up? I’m just above you in 10A.”
My gaze cut from her to my empty apartment and back again. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. “Sure. But weren’t you leaving?”
“Nah,” she glanced back over the rail, “I think I’ll give it some time to chill out down there first. I’m Gina, by the way.”
“Avery,” I smiled, “Nice to meet you.”
She waited for me to lock up before leading the way up the stairs and to the door of her apartment. I avoided looking down into the lobby again; I’d had enough dead guy to last me a lifetime.
I counted two deadbolts on Gina’s door when she unlocked it and pointed. “You have two locks,” I said, stating the obvious. “Mine doesn’t have that.”
“My brother put them on,” she answered, pushing inside and beckoning me to follow. “If you plan on staying, you’ll need one. Connie doesn’t like to mess with keys, so she hands out copies of her master. The one you have will open any apartment in the building—and the same goes for their keys. And mine.”
“Great,” I sighed. She flicked the lights on, and my mouth dropped open. “This is…” I started and stopped, my eyes wide.
“Surprising?” She supplied with a laugh, “I know. I worked hard on it.”
That much was obvious. The apartment was identical to mine, but the walls were all painted in light, cheerful colors that made stepping in from the dingy hallway seem like walking into another world. Framed artwork hung on every wall, brightly colored abstract pieces that dominated the space and yet somehow completed it. It was the books, though, that caught my attention—two bookcases positively crammed with paperbacks claimed an entire wall of the tiny living room.
Gina didn’t wait to grab the beers—two cans in her hands when she moved back to where I stood. “See this?” she pointed down at the hardwood floor, “That was under the carpet when I pulled it out, can you believe it? This building is old, but the bones are good if you start digging.”
&nbs
p; “I’m afraid of what I might find if I dig too deep,” I laughed. “This is really nice.”
It was. The kitchen cabinets were painted white, light green curtains hung at the windows, and the single dark gray sofa was, I suspected, hiding a bed. She waved me towards it, and I sat with my beer in hand, facing an army of worn paperbacks and a tiny old television topped with a bunny-ear antenna. Something told me Gina didn’t watch much tv.
“So,” Gina said, coming to sit beside me and throwing her black leather boots up comfortably on the wooden coffee table. They were scuffed with a heavy sole and laced neatly to the very top. “What’s your story?”
“Nothing very interesting,” I chose my words carefully. “I was driving across country and my car broke down outside of town.”
“You get it looked at?”
“Sort of,” I answered, staring at the can in my hand. I might not know a lot about cars, but I knew that whatever was wrong with mine was more than I could afford. “A trucker stopped and tried to get it started, but nothing worked. And then,” I continued with a heavy sigh, disbelieving my own bad luck, “When he left, he stole my purse.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yep. Right off the front seat. Wallet, ID, most of my money.”
“Do you think he did something to your car?” Gina’s jaded way of thinking suited my personality perfectly, and I warmed to it.
“No,” I shook my head, “He came along about half an hour after and sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He didn’t break it, he was just an asshole.”
“Well that sucks.” Gina said, summing up the situation appropriately. “Where did you stay?”
“In the backseat,” I shifted uncomfortably. There was an ache in my pride, sitting in this put-together apartment with a girl who had her shit together enough to invite me in and offer me a beer. There was a pause, and when I looked up I found her staring at me with a strange expression.
“Where did you say you broke down?”
“Um…” I faltered at the look on her face, “Outside of town, near a factory. It was all closed up and abandoned there.”
“The old Civic factory?”
“That was it.”
Gina suddenly leaned forward, her expression so intense it caused me to pull back into the cushions. “It’s not abandoned there, and that’s not a place you want to be. Ever. How long have you been sleeping there?”
Fear curled in my stomach at her words, and there was a crumpling sound when my fingers tightened on the aluminum can in my hand. “Just last night.” I swallowed hard. “What do you mean it isn’t empty?”
Her gaze met mine for a long pause before answering. “You’re telling me you didn’t hear or see anything weird while you were there?”
I stared at her, wavering on my answer. The truth was I’d been on the road, sleeping in the back of my car for over two weeks, and it had taken only one night in Industry City to decide that I needed another place to stay. Especially since I didn’t know when I’d be leaving.
I believed Gina when she said the factory wasn’t abandoned, no matter how it had seemed when I’d first rolled my car into the parking lot. I’d heard voices echoing from between the buildings, though there had been no other signs of life or lights around them. Vagrants, I assumed, which wasn’t a comforting thought to try and sleep with. Not that I managed much sleep. I’d spent most of the night battling a fearsome headache, blaming allergies for the building pressure behind my eyes and swallowing over-the-counter painkillers like candy until I resigned myself to the fact that nothing would help and simply gave into the pain.
It was more than the headache, though. There was also the murmur—the whispered, relentlessly rhythmic sound that never ceased. It began when the sun went down and never really stopped, though at times it became white-noise in the back of my mind, like the hum of a highway in the distance or the buzzing of cicadas in summer. I couldn’t place it, finally deciding that somewhere in the empty factory, a machine was still running, and the grind of its motor was playing tricks in my head. Tricks that sounded like voices chanting words I couldn’t understand. The same words. Over and over again.
Between losing my money, my busted car, my headache and the noise, I’d been on the verge of a breakdown, burying myself beneath a mound of blankets in the backseat to cry. At some point, I had fallen asleep, and didn’t wake up until well after noon, with the sun pouring hot through the windows.
That’s when I found the mark.
It had hurt when I’d stretched, a sharp pinching pain in my left shoulder revealing an odd-looking burn in the rough shape of a crescent. It was hidden beneath the neckline of my shirt, but I could see it easily when I pulled that aside; the wound was about an inch long, the skin around it glaring an angry red. I had no clue how it happened or how I’d slept through it. The best I’d come up with was someone had thrown a lit cigarette through the window I’d left cracked for air, and it slowly burned me as I slept. My shirt wasn’t burned, and I couldn’t find the cigarette butt, but it wasn’t the first time someone had messed with me in the past two weeks. It was by far the most violating and the scariest, though, considering they could have set my car on fire with me in it.
My headache and the noise had disappeared with the daylight, but the weird burn and a persistent feeling of dread were all the motivation I needed to walk the rest of the way into town, looking for somewhere else to stay. Compared to last night, Connie’s shitty apartment was a palace.
It was all a bit much to say to Gina, though, and I certainly wasn’t going to start showing the woman I’d just met strange marks on my body. Instead, I was silent, and she nodded.
“Yeah,” she said, “That’s what I thought.” Before I could ask any more questions, she’d stood, tipping her can back to finish it off. “I gotta get to work. Do you need anything? Blankets? Towels?”
“No,” I rose quickly to my feet, “I’m good.”
She smiled. “No, you aren’t. Hang on a second, I’ll see what I can find.”
Five minutes later she was bundling me out the door with two blankets, a pillow, towels and a decent selection of cleaning supplies. “Thank you,” I started awkwardly, but she waved me off.
“Don’t mention it, get it back to me whenever. Also, did Connie tell you not to flush the toilet between one and three?”
“Yes. Is that a real thing?”
“It’s a real thing,” Gina nodded solemnly as she shut the door, “And you don’t want to know why.”
I avoided looking down the stairwell until I’d reached my floor, then couldn’t help myself from a glance over the railing. The body was gone, as was Connie and most of the crowd, though there was a dark stain on the floor that I had a feeling would still be there in the morning, and the crime scene tape remained. Several uniformed cops were milling around, talking with the detective who was standing hands-on-hips, his broad shoulders squared off, surveying the scene. I watched him for a moment, startled when he suddenly tipped his head back—his gaze colliding with mine from nine floors below.
“Shit.” I jerked back, nearly stumbling into the wall as I fumbled with the key to my apartment. The blankets fell from my arms and onto the dirty floor, and I cursed again, my ears straining for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, stabbing the key at the lock, my hand shaking from the sudden shot of adrenaline. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“And I thought you wanted someone to call the cops.”
The voice was so close that I barely stopped myself from screaming, looking up to find dark green eyes and a knowing smirk leaning casually against the door frame of my apartment, the silver lighter turning idly in his hand.
“Do you live in the hallway or something?” I snapped, finally managing to slide the key into the door and turn the lock, then kicked it the rest of the way open.
He tipped his head in a vague motion that seemed to encompass the entirety of the building. “Nope. I live over there.” He pointed at the blankets I’d dropped, stand
ing in the doorway while I dumped the rest onto the carpet of the living room. “You dropped those.”
“Thanks.” I said sarcastically, snatching the blankets from the floor and adding them to the pile, then curled my fingers around the door handle, ready to shut it once he moved. Which, of course, he didn’t. “Was there something you needed?”
“Nope,” he flashed me another grin, “Just being neighborly.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to ignore the sudden dryness in my mouth or the way my heartbeat skipped when he smiled. He was far too handsome to be standing in the doorway of a building like this, and for some reason it annoyed me.
“Okay well…nice to meet you.” I started to shut the door on him, sighing impatiently when he still didn’t move. “What?”
“He’s coming up here, you know.” His tone was suddenly serious.
“Who?”
“The detective. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell him anything.”
“Yeah well, if you’d move I wouldn’t have to. Also lucky for me, I don’t know anything.” I gave another push with the door and this time he stepped back with a smirk.
“It’s not about what you know. It’s about what he thinks he can get out of you.”
I scowled at him before finally shutting the door, sure he could hear the lock turn and the thump of my forehead against the wood. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but his words weren’t at all comforting. After a moment I straightened up and pressed my eye to the peephole to see if he was gone. My apartment door looked onto the stairwell, and I was taking in the empty hall when the detective suddenly appeared in my view. He paused on the landing, turning a slow circle to look at each of the apartments before his gaze fastened on something to my right—most likely the bent railing and broken door of 9B. I stood frozen, holding my breath when he passed by my door—not daring to move. The hardwood floors might be pretty, but the thin carpet covering mine did nothing to mask the creak of every step. I had every intention of not being home if he decided to come knocking, but my current position wasn’t exactly a comfortable one. I kept my eye fastened to the peephole as the minutes dragged by, and I’d just begun to think he’d decided to move into 9B now that it was vacant when he popped into my line of view again. I choked back the sound of surprise that nearly burst out of me, shallowing my breathing and watching as he stood for a long moment in front of my door.
Into Dust: The Industry City Trilogy - Book One Page 2
