Tainted

by A. E. Rought

  “I have to.” She doesn’t leave arguing room in her tone, or her expression. “If we run, I look guilty and so do you. You’ve got too many secrets for them to go prying.” She casts a look at the front door, the snow flitting in around the edge, because Bree won’t let the officers in. “If I talk to them, it gives you time to try and figure out what’s really going on. And hey,” she gives a half-hearted shrug, “we might find out I’m nuts and belong in a cage after all.”

  But you’ll die without the formula, hangs on my tongue, blocked by Emma’s finger on my lips.

  “Let me do this, Alex.” The corners of her mouth turn down, tugging her freckles in the wrong direction when she frowns at me. How can I turn her over?

  “They can’t keep her,” Jason’s voice comes over my shoulder, “Not if she goes in willingly. If they had enough evidence, they would be here to arrest her.”

  “How do you know?” Em asks.

  “My cousin’s had a couple of run-ins with the cops,” Jason admits with a shrug

  “See?” Emma puts a finger under my chin, and then swipes a kiss over my lips. With that, she turns and walks away. It opens a rift, a sudden cutting ache, the kind that wakes what’s left of Daniel. The need to grab her, pull her back, burns double-strength through my nerves. She can’t leave. There’s nothing in my hands to keep me from reaching for her. I bury the compulsion, though, stuff my hands in my jeans pockets and follow close behind.

  Bree finally allows the officers into the house after I stand behind Em and rest a hand on her shoulder. She wants to be brave, but I’m feeling weak. The prospect of losing Emma is terrifying, spilling hot and poisonous through me. She shifts her weight back, leaning on me, and I’m not sure if it’s for her comfort or mine.

  The lead, older officer has a lived-in face, deep creases by his eyes like he smiles a lot, and graying hair shorn in a buzz cut. Officer Duncan, by his badge. The younger cop – Officer Herschel – despite his uniform looks like he studied law enforcement from the wrong side of the badge first.

  “Emma Gentry?” the lead officer asks.

  “Yes.” She squares her shoulders.

  “Would you be willing to come down to the station and answer a few questions?” If these were police officers in a movie with a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, Officer Duncan would be the Good Cop.

  “What is this about?” Bree asks. She’s inched her way to standing beside Emma and holding her hand.

  “That’s for us to discuss with Ms Gentry,” the young cop gives a brusque answer.

  “Jarrod,” Officer Duncan says, his voice weighty with reproach. Then he turns to face us. “We received an anonymous tip involving Emma and we have to follow up on it.”

  “Can someone go with her?” Jason asks.

  “No one else in the interview,” Officer Herschel answers. Then quickly adds, “Sorry.”

  “But someone can go with,” Jason insists, “And wait for her?”

  “Of course,” says Officer Duncan.

  “I’ll go,” Bree says.

  “It might be better if you stay here in case your parents get back,” Jason reminds her. Someone has to be here with a cover story. “I’ll go, if Emma wants.”

  A tear shines in Em’s eye when she nods. Bree unwinds her fingers from Em’s and Jason moves in to fill her vacated spot at Em’s side. He’s my wingman, even if we’re breaking formation.

  “You’ve got your cellphone, right?” My girlfriend, and my best friend nod. “Keep in touch, OK.”

  “Yep,” Jason says. Em answers with a nod, her bottom lip trembling. I can read her thoughts in her eyes when she flicks me a glance. She trusts me to figure this mess out even when she can’t trust herself not to cry.

  My throat tightens, and I swallow at a lump obstructing my breath. The police officers walk out and flank the door, waiting for Emma. She pauses at the threshold after donning a jacket and gives me a sad smile. Her tear falls, and she reaches for Jason’s hand. He doesn’t hesitate. He folds her small hand in his and follows her out into the frigid air.

  Bree watches through the window until the car doors slam. “I’m going to be strong,” she says, a quaver in her voice. “And you don’t have time to fall apart, either.”

  Something in her words hits home. She referenced me and falling apart. I am a part of all this. And certain aspects of my life are given: loving Emma, needing weekly shots and shocks, Ascension labs, and Hailey.

  A whimper sneaks past Bree’s defenses when I bury her in a quick hug. I kiss the top of her head, and promise, “Don’t worry, Jason’s with her now. And I think I have an idea where to look.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  My mind runs over shards of memories, fractured by what my father did and my need to put distance between me and the girl in them. Hailey recently made a very pointed comment about our old haunts. We were the talk of Sadony Academy once, for more reasons than I ever wanted to dredge back up and remember. One thing we never shared with anyone else – her loft apartment near DarkHouse.

  She dressed up like a ghost the Halloween before Emma and I met. I wasn’t the same person then, I was one of Sadony’s elite and acted like it. Last year, on Halloween, Hailey was naked under her “ghost” sheet. And she only wore it at the loft. She promised me that night would haunt me.

  I guess it has. I still remember that night: a different kind of trick-or-treat game – the silky sheet, Hailey’s warm legs, the demanding feeling of her kiss.

  Why are those memories so damn clear, when others are gone, black holes in my mind?

  The rear end of the Acura slides when I hit a patch of ice on the way downtown. Ice and salt and sand make a treacherous mess of the roads. It’s as much of a ghost town here as White River was on the way through town hunting Hailey yesterday. The spirits then were in my imagination. I’m not sure I’m ready to face the ghost in my memory.

  The factory-turned-loft apartments materialize a few blocks ahead, a giant light-speckled void in the snowfall. Hailey’s loft, bankrolled by Ascension, sat on the closest lakeside corner of the fourth floor. That was before my father had her relocated to the lake house, closer to Ascension. I roll to a stop in the parking lot. For having moved months ago, her parking space looks very well used. Maybe the owners rented her loft to a new tenant, but I doubt it. She said, “You remember our old haunts, right?” like it meant something more.

  It’s time to find out why she said it.

  I park at the far edge of the Visitors’ Parking section, grab my flashlight from my glove box, check my pockets to verify my phone, wallet and knife are there. Thankful I don’t feel the cold the way I should, I duck out into the frozen air.

  Still, the arctic chill steals into my lungs, clouds my breath when I hike around the lot to avoid leaving prints. At the side entrance, I pull out my wallet and thumb through the cards until I find the key card she once gave me. “Keep it,” she’d said when I broke up with her, “you’ll be back.” Self-fulfilling prophecy?

  I should be shocked when it works. Should be. The door unlocks with a quiet metallic click.

  A vacant metal staircase spirals up six floors. Even in a higher-rent building like this one it smells like urine and cheap beer.

  Ignoring the smell, I take the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor and let myself in with the key card. The dim hall lights add to my apprehension. It looks like a hallway in a horror movie, going on and on into darkness. Knowing Hailey, she used the far stairwell and knocked out the light bulb at her end to foil the security camera in the center of the hall. I look up, giving the lens under the red light a clear view of my face. Too late to sneak past if she’s here and patched into the security feeds. Still, I pat my knife, taking small comfort in its weight. Better to have a little protection and not need it, than need it and not have it.

  Anemic light washes under her door when I reach the unlit end of the hall. I creep to the side of the door, watching the light for passing shadows, listening for movement, anything to
cue me to activity on the far side of the panel.

  The hall closes in and stretches out at the same time, vertigo and pressure, twisting me from the light, driving me to face what’s in our old haunt. Thinking a wordless prayer, I slide the card key through the lock. No effect. So, she is worried about getting caught, despite baiting me here. My knife makes a soft snick sound when I open it. The weight of the building bears down on me as I use the blade to force the lock to release. I snake through the opening, suck in a gasp at the cold air inside the apartment, then spin and lock the door behind me. I could throw the chain lock too – but if Hailey is using this place, it will alert her something’s wrong if she comes back.

  Past the three-quarter wall partitioned foyer, the brilliant desperate madness overwhelms me. I blink, rub my eyes in disbelief.

  Pictures, ticket stubs and receipts, computer print-outs and chronicle clippings line the walls from floor to ceiling. Progressing from our first date until current events, the inner walls of Hailey’s supposedly abandoned loft are now a shrine to our relationship.

  Cardboard cones hold dried flower arrangements by appropriate pictures. Crystal headed-stick picks skewer dry, faded corsages beneath the formal dance portraits. A stuffed animal hangs crucified beside an apology note I wrote after a fight. Expensive jewelry glitters, dangling from more pins, draping picture frames.

  The schism between surreal and scary happens where I stand. The next wall segment is mostly stolen candid shots of me watching Emma, me at Shelley High, me at Memorial Gardens when I didn’t know why I stood there. All accompanied by Hailey’s handwritten notes, suppositions of my “obsession” being a side-effect of my resurrection. The farther down the wall I walk, the harsher her language becomes, the fatter the letters, the darker the ink until it looks like a child wrote: RUIN HER!! à

  Past the installed French doors, in what once was Hailey’s bedroom, stands a pictorial representation of the past two weeks, centered around a life-size picture of Emma in the middle of the opposite wall. Black, white and red strings web through the air, connecting images, items, people.

  I stumble back, my heart suddenly racing like it’s not mine and wants out of my body and wants the hell out of here.

  Pictures of the bridge where Emma crashed and drowned fill the left half of the inside wall, surrounded by measurements: angles and speed, wind speed, water depths, temperatures, estimated times for car submersion, hypothermia onset, drowning. Strings go from Emma to a picture of Trent to various factoids. Medical read-outs, blood tests, chemical formulas with vials taped beside them, plaster the right half of the wall.

  A chill runs down my spine when I see replicas of the scented bath products I bought for Em for Christmas. They hang on the wall affixed next to an equation that contains components of our life-sustaining formula, with chemical elements I don’t recognize.

  Closest to the room’s corner hangs a fillable aerosol inhaler beside a modified version of the formula with even more chemicals I don’t know.

  Paul would know them.

  I dig my cell phone out, and snap a still of the different versions, and their accompaniments. Then I step back and take pictures of each half of the wall.

  Emma’s image takes up the center of the middle wall, with stolen past medical records on her left, most current readings on her right. To either side hang pictures of Trent and Katrina, one an apparent victim, one an apparent accomplice. Strings web from Trent to Emma and the bridge segment, to Emma and images snapped at the Reindeer Games and mounted to the left side of the third wall.

  Strings stretch from Katrina to Emma, to shots of the animal attack taped to the right side of the back wall. They trace through the cold air to the right side wall, closest to the corner, and a picture of Emma by the house fire.

  Written between the pictures are more formulas, facts, rates of absorption, times of death.

  The close end of the right wall, nearer the door is blank.

  Hailey isn’t finished with Emma yet.

  The chill in the apartment clenches my heart, strangles my lungs. There’s not enough air inside Hailey’s web of lies and murder. I was right. Hailey’s bent on Emma’s ruin. She turned her obsessive, criminal brilliance against the girl I love. Hailey masterminded it all.

  Instinct says to run, to grab Emma and put as much of Michigan between the girls as possible.

  I can’t do that. This systematic destruction has delivered Emma into the hands of the police. We are going to need every bit of evidence we can get against her to save Emma.

  Careful not to disturb anything, I take pictures of her notes, her stolen readings, and the walls. I open my message program, and send the entire gallery of horror to Paul. He’ll be able to decipher them, figure out what Hailey did to Emma and how to fix it. The data-heavy file will take a few minutes to send. I back out to explore the rest of the loft while I wait to send copies to the police.

  Massive sheets of plastic drape from the ceiling, sealing off the kitchen. Knowing Katrina and Hailey swiped chemicals and drugs from Ascension, I peer through the heavy grade plastic rather than walk in. Lab equipment lines the counters, a couple of aerosol containers sit open beside a distillation coil immersed in an evaporation bath.

  A small vibration notifies me the file has been sent successfully. Weak light flashes back from a nearby small diamond bracelet as I open the web browser, and search for the White River Police Department’s email. Pacing the wall of windows, I delete the formula images from the file folder, attach the new version, add the loft’s address as a subject line, and click send. The police will come, they will see the formulas, but hopefully Paul can create an antidote first.

  Sound from the hallway announces someone’s approach. It must be Hailey. I fling a glance at the progress bar. The file transfer isn’t complete. Holding my breath, I inch behind the billowy black lengths of Hailey’s prom dress where it’s nailed to the wall, high beside the window and mimicking a drape.

  In the movies, the person stupid enough to go behind the curtain gets caught. I just want to buy my phone enough time to send the email.

  Her key scratches in the lock, the tumbler grinds as it turns, probably due to me forcing it with my knife. Warm air gusts in from the hallway when the door opens, sucked into the void of cold air. The skirt I hide behind ruffles. Light hits the tops of my shoes. I lift the phone enough from my chest to check the progress. Nearly there.

  Please, I pray silently. Please…

  Light footsteps pace, the sounds echoing and hard to track in the furniture-less room. Her shadow cuts swaths of light and dark beneath the dress, then stops. The darkness spreads beneath my feet, thrown and growing as Hailey approaches. The fabric cocooning me slowly presses in, then smashes tight against my face obstructing my breath. I shove my phone into my pocket, and struggle against the solid black net gagging me. I shake my head and can’t dislodge the pressure. My lungs burn.

  The skirt rips beside my face, and the mouth of an aerosol distributor appears in the gap.

  Inhaling is instinctual when the fabric comes away from my mouth and nose. The mist from the aerosol spray is cold, medicinal in my sinuses and throat. A cough racks my chest, and only draws in a bigger recovery breath, and a second blast of the stinging spray.

  In a flash, the fight leaves me. Thought flees. An appalling sense of detachment fills me. My brain is there, but doesn’t care to engage in escape, in fighting, in anything until…

  “Give me your phone, Alex.”

  My phone? Of course. I don’t need it. I hold the phone out. A dainty hand snatches it away. Whoever is here needs it more than me.

  “Good boy. I wish you hadn’t waited so long to come here. Now you’ve forced me to rush things.”

  Rush what? A sharp thorn of something stabs in my head. I was here for something. Here to do something.

  The slim hand tucks the phone in my pocket.

  “Now,” she says, “You’re very tired, aren’t you, Alex? You’ve been working
so hard, chasing me. I think you should go to sleep.”

  Sleep is good. I nod, even though I can’t see her through the hole rent in the fabric.

  “Good.” The girl pulls the black material away from me. Black hair, pale green eyes. Hailey.

  She lunges at me, and jabs a hot sting into my neck. The heat spreads, flooding into the hollow the aerosol made. My joints loosen, muscles turn warm. I make a grab for her when she steps away with a syringe in her hand.

  “Have a nice nap,” she says. “Come and find me when you wake up. You’ll know where to look.”

  I go numb from the brain down, my legs fold at the knees, the floor rushes at my face. Dust whisks up when I hit the carpet, then my vision blurs and blackens.

  “Come find me,” she says, “where it all began…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Consciousness returns, a chaos of light and sound screaming into my head.

  Where am I? Why am I on the floor?

  Why is my stomach so damn upset?

  Acid and chunks burn a path up my throat. I roll up onto my hands and knees and vomit. A room of papers, sparkles and gouges spins in my vision. My stomach spasms and hurls more out onto the floor. The floor rocks like a ship on the big lake. My guts cramp up, but nothing comes out.

  “Alex Franks?” someone asks, crowding close. Who wants to know? I can’t spit it past my locked jaws. “We got your email. We’re here to help.”

  A hand settles on my shoulder, a badge looms into my view. I try to shake the hand loose, then see the face behind the badge.

  “Officer Duncan?”

  “It’s OK, Alex,” he catches me when my equilibrium gives out and pitches me toward the puke beneath me. He shows me a used syringe, identical to the ones we have preloaded with the sedative my father created, twenty to thirty minutes of unconsciousness with hardly any side-effects. “You’ve been drugged. Can you sit up?”

  “I can’t stay here.” I want to push him away, but my arms don’t agree with the command to move. “I need to go.” Hailey said to meet her somewhere. But where? My brain feels fuzzy and limp. Images swirl behind my eyes, pictures and bridges, red and black string, a girl. And a blank section of wall. Emma. She’s in terrible danger. “Where’s Emma?”