“I didn’t think it was important. I only recorded it in case it wasn’t a prank and I had to go to the police with it.”
“Fucking-A, Teddy. I think we might’ve just listened to someone getting killed.”
“We don’t know that,” Teddy replied, but the color had left his face. “How many jobs between us where weird stuff like this goes down? Remember that guy who used to call us at the hospital every night at 2 a.m. threatening to throw himself into traffic? But then it turned out he was just trying to get his nineteen-year-old mistress to feel sorry for him.”
“Have you told anyone about this? Donnie?”
“C’mon, Donnie would laugh our asses out of the building. He’s old school. He’s worked worse places than this.”
“I don’t give a damn about the size of his resume,” Boyd said. “We’ve got to talk to him and see if he can transfer us off site. I’m serious.”
Teddy shook his head. “I can’t, Boyd. I got a family to think about now and Donnie is paying me top dollar for this rotation. Most money I’ve made on a site in a long time. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you know you can’t walk away either. I may not be the smartest guy, but I know when you walked in through those doors you weren’t exactly beating the job offers off with a stick.”
Boyd folded his hands up over his head and took a walk away from the desk. He hated to admit it, but Teddy was right. If Boyd tried to transfer sites he’d be adding another red flag to the ever-growing list, and then he might as well see about a new line of work. He’d lose the house, no question — not the truck, that was paid off, but they’d take everything else. He cursed and kicked at the fake plant closest to the wall and sent it toppling over across the tiled floor. It took him a moment to gather himself, there were few things in life he hated more than feeling like he was up against it. When he cleared his head he returned to the desk, where Teddy was waiting patiently.
“All right,” Boyd said. “If we’re doing this we need to make a few changes.”
They decided that Boyd would stay on for Teddy’s shift, and they would assess the damage to the building and see if anything else had been vandalized. Teddy would also be staying for Boyd’s shift in the evening, but would depart for a few hours to check on Gina before coming back.
Teddy had gone out to his truck and came back through the automatic doors with a cardboard box under his arm. Boyd raised an eyebrow and gestured at it with his head. “Walkie-talkies,” Teddy said. “It’ll be good to have these to communicate with when we do our rounds.”
Boyd nodded and gave Teddy a tight smile to show he thought they were a good idea, but his mind was elsewhere. He still felt trapped under the weight of what to do, and he was starting to wonder what the tipping point would finally be.
-14-
The damp and cold air on the third floor seemed to cling to the walls and then to them as they stepped out of the elevator. Boyd understood now why the heat kept kicking on up here. He could feel the skin on his face and his fingers getting numb. Teddy was already on the move down the corridor and about to hang a right at the junction. “All the rooms on this side face the parking lot,” he said before dropping out of sight. “I’ll go to the end and we’ll work our way back to the middle.”
Boyd wanted to say that he didn’t think splitting up was a good idea, but he kept the thought to himself. He was supposed to be the big, bad, homicide detective. He’d certainly seen a lifetime of depravity and the horrible things people did to one another, but after Morgan something in his nerves had gotten frayed.
Damaged, even — perhaps beyond repair.
He turned the corner and saw Teddy heading into the last room on the left-hand side. The corridor, like much of the hotel, had the same acrid smell of new carpets and paint. His hand had just touched the doorknob to the first room in the hall when his eyes fell onto one of the paintings on the wall across from him.
He stepped over to it, and then immediately took a step back to make sure he was seeing it right.
It was encased in a wooden black frame. On the left, and closest to the viewer, was a woman. She was curvy, with soft, porcelain white skin and long red hair. She lay nude under the shade of a tree with bark the color of charcoal. Her hands were bound behind her back with what looked like barbed wire. The woman’s torso had been carved, there were deep slice wounds on her flesh, but most of the finer details of the painting were crude. In the center, and the focal point, the sun was sinking into the horizon and its light reflected over a lake.
Boyd’s eyes moved to the small embankment next to the lake where a dark figure was crouched with his back to the woman under the tree. Boyd drew back further. He didn’t like how the woman’s eyes had black X’s over them like the whole thing was meant to be comical. A lewd cartoon, maybe.
He thought about pulling the damn thing off the wall when something moved past the window at the end of the hall. The sun was on its way to the other side of the building and what was left of the light dispersed beneath the window. As Boyd turned to see who had stepped through it, he heard a door being closed shut.
“Teddy?” he called.
He wished he had his gun, but then part of him didn’t. The last few days had him so wired that he feared his reaction time was off, and that he might wind up shooting a hole through Teddy’s head by mistake. He walked along the carpet to where he’d heard the door click shut. He reached a hand out for the metallic doorknob when Teddy stepped back out into the hall from the first room Boyd had seen him go into.
The two stared at each other for a moment.
Teddy’s body was blocking the light from the window behind him and it cast his face in shadow. “Find anything?” he asked.
He seemed winded, short of breath, and when he came closer Boyd noticed his face was very pale as if in the few moments he was gone he’d come down with the flu. Boyd started to say something else, then changed his mind.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just freezing up here. I think maybe that explains what happened to the windows.”
Boyd frowned. “The cold? The windows were shattered. I don’t think it’s cold enough up here to do that.”
“You an expert now?” Teddy asked as he brushed past him and hit Boyd’s shoulder hard. He watched as Teddy went up the hall toward the first room Boyd had attempted to go into. “We’re probably going to need to call an exterminator to deal with the locusts,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m going to do another sweep up here and I’ll meet you back in the lobby.”
-15-
Boyd was stepping off the elevator, heading back to the lobby, when he heard someone whispering. He let himself get very still, focused on the sound, and listened. There was a bizarre, rhythmic quality to it, even though it was faint, and almost completely inaudible.
He stopped in front of the desk and listened again. The sound was still there, louder, but he couldn’t discern what was being said, if anything. It took him some moments of playing a solo “Hot and Cold” game — stepping closer and then further away — to figure out the sound was coming from one of the walkie-talkies still in the cardboard box beneath the desk.
There was just one inside and he assumed the other was clipped on Teddy’s belt. He let the box fall to his feet as he held the walkie and twisted the little dial to increase the volume. It was mostly static, but then he started to hear a voice. It was soft at first, but there was a rhythm to it that drifted in and out like a sea breeze.
“We are all alone … we are … all … alone. We too … feel … alone.”
He pressed his thumb down on the center button as if to speak, but then let go. No more voice flittering there. Only the hiss of static.
“…Boyd?”
The sound of his name jumped him and he tried to turn the volume up further, but it was already as high as it would go. “Boyd?” the name called to him again. The voice sounded almost peaceful. He pressed the button down to speak.
“Who is thi
s?” he asked.
“Go now, Boyd … you have to leave …”
The voice was so tiny, and it reminded him of when he would hold Morgan on his lap; he’d done that during a parade once. He felt a warm, tingling sensation move through his face.
“Go, Boyd … leave … run …”
“Isabelle, is that you?”
He smiled and had to fight the sensation to laugh for some reason. It was strange how comfortable he felt now. It was like a warm hug after a long day, or slipping into a hot bath. He could feel his eyelids start to sink down.
“You won’t get another chance … Badge plays for keeps.”
Boyd stirred. “Wait. Say that again?”
There was no response, except for what he thought was soft, childish laughter.
“You won’t last…”
Boyd felt something swell in him, and he looked over the desk toward the automatic doors and realized for the first time how easy it would be to just walk away. He’d climb into his truck, start her up, drive down the hill and never see this place again unless he got the nerve to come back and burn the thing to the ground.
“Still couldn’t find out what’s up with the heat,” Teddy’s voice broke through, distracting Boyd from his thoughts. “All the thermostats say sixty-eight degrees. I don’t get it.”
Boyd turned to look at him and was startled by how much color his friend had lost. His eyes were red and glassy.
“Ted, what’s wrong with you?” Boyd blurted.
Teddy frowned and shrugged the question off. “Nothing. Other than being overtired and jonesing for another coffee, I’m good.”
Boyd went to say something, but thought better of it. Instead he asked, “What did you see in that room you went into when we first got up there?”
Teddy’s eyes lit up for a second, but then quickly the look was gone.
“Just a bunch of broken windows. Look, I’m going to head out to grab that coffee and check in on Gina. I won’t be gone for more than a few hours.”
Boyd wanted to respond, but Teddy was already moving through the automatic doors.
-16-
Teddy had only been gone for about an hour, but Boyd continued to stand watch in front of the lobby. The last few hours had left him so scatter-brained that he’d failed to start another search for Lady. He hoped that the shepherd was okay, and that wherever she was, she was far away from here.
He rested his palm on the holster of his gun and was glad that he hadn’t forgotten this time to store it in his truck. It added the codependent level of comfort that he needed and it calmed him as well. So much so that he’d started to formulate a plan to get a transfer off site.
There were one or two small bridges he hadn’t burned yet. He had an old contact from his time on the force that was always trying sell Boyd on doing some surveillance work for him. It’d be a real, real long shot, but it was better than nothing. He just had to make sure he left on good terms with Donnie.
He’d try to plead a case one more time with Teddy, but a part of him knew it was hopeless and he couldn’t blame the man either. He did have a family to think about. Boyd didn’t have that, not anymore, but he understood the sense of obligation that Teddy had. It helped Boyd to think of these things because it replaced the feeling that he was being coward.
He bit back on his anger and the slight embarrassment he felt.
A squeak of a noise behind him stopped him from his thoughts.
It sounded like the hinges on a door. The sound went on, louder and falling away, then it stopped. Boyd shook his head. What the hell was that?
If the lobby hadn’t been so quiet he never would have been able to hear it. He removed the gun from its holster and started for the corridor. He took a moment to get his breathing under control. He knew he would have to be calm and unflinching so as not to shoot someone by mistake. Although, another thought entered his head, that was if whatever was making the noise wasn’t doing it by mistake.
The sound had come from down the corridor toward the lounge. He surprised himself by how easy he fell back into the stance of moving slowly through an open area with his gun drawn. He could feel the adrenaline kicking through his system and he had to squash the familiar urge to call out to a possible intruder that he had a weapon.
About a third of the way down the corridor, he stopped. The door to the security room was wide open. The interior dark, apart from a flickering light that also strobed onto the fall wall across from it. He eased up slowly and got a position against the wall with the gun lowered at the ground.
Click-click-whir. Click-click-whir.
It was hard to distinguish what the noise was at first. Boyd turned his head down and strained to listen.
Click-click-whir. Click-click-whir.
He stole a peek into the room and was about to pull his head back when he stopped. The tiny room was empty, but what gave him pause was the lone chair in the center, pulled back as if someone had just gotten up for a snack run. Boyd stepped into the room and holstered his gun. The chair got rolled back against the table.
On the end table with the large monitor was where Boyd found the source of the clicking. The disc drive below was trying desperately to play something, the internal mechanisms were grinding with the effort, but something was stuck. Boyd pressed on the eject button, but the tray only slid out halfway. He looked around and found a pencil on the table nearby and was able to use it to pry the tray free. Once it was extended he could see that it housed a shiny blue mini-disc.
Boyd removed it from the tray, studied it, and then wiped it off on his pant leg and placed it back in the tray. The monitor went from blue to black as something on the disc cued up. The image was blurry before it came into focus. Then it shifted to grainy black and white like the video feed on the other screens. The point of view was from high up on the wall of a large room that Boyd only recognized as being in the hotel due to the similar carpet design as in the lobby. He turned to look at the other monitors, but didn’t see the point of view he was watching reflected there. Why had it changed?
He brought his attention back to the big monitor. The room the camera was in was almost fully dark, apart from what looked like flickering candlelight.
Boyd squinted as his eyes glanced down at the time stamp in the lower right corner of the screen: October 5th. About a week ago.
A young man and woman were sprawled out in the center of the room just below a tall window that didn’t help bring any more light into the room. Both were nude and seemed to be in the heavy throes of sex. Empty bottles of beer were scattered to their left. The candles on either side of them flickered and danced in an odd type of rhythm against them as the couple appeared to be shivering beneath a thin blanket.
Boyd looked away, feeling a bit uncomfortable watching a private moment between two people he didn’t know. He tried to think on when this had been recorded. The time stamp said October, yes, but hadn’t Ed just set these up the other night?
The wall of monitors sat on a metal housing that held all the drives for recording. Boyd was able to figure that out with a quick inspection. At one time these had possibly been operational prior to Boyd working there, but someone had shut them down. Why?
He went back to the big monitor again. The lovemaking had apparently wound down and the two were laying on top of each other. The blanket was discarded off to the side. Nothing happened on screen for a moment and Boyd thought for a second the video had paused. He thought about shutting it off. He didn’t like having it on. Maybe Ed had found it and was giving it a watch before Boyd had showed up the other night, but that was the only reason he could think of why it was here.
He stepped over to the monitor to shut it off when his eyes caught something on the screen. A light, very dim at first, was slowly crawling across the floor like when someone opened a door into a dark room. A silhouette stood in the doorway, unnoticed by the couple. Boyd felt something ripple across his scalp and his breath caught. In an impractical gesture he almo
st yelled out to the couple to warn them. It was such a natural impulse, but he knew they couldn’t hear him.
The boyfriend saw the silhouette in the doorway first, and flung himself off his girlfriend, sending the beer bottles scattering. The girl sat up as the shadow of the silhouette fell onto her face.
Boyd didn’t have to guess what her reaction was.
The shadow grew larger as the silhouette walked further into the room, but he hadn’t shown himself on camera yet. Boyd was trying to pay attention, but he was also distracted by something he noticed on the monitor just out of the corner of his eye. He finally had to turn his attention to it when he realized what he was looking at.
It was Teddy’s truck. It was parked in the service road next to the building.
How long had it been there?
He went to head back to the lobby; he’d left the walkie on the desk and he thought maybe Teddy might still have his on him, so that Boyd could figure out what was going on. The larger monitor started to flicker and a fuzzy line ran down the top of the display to the bottom as the image came back with a start. It was like the video wanted to skip forward in time. The couple were on their knees now, nude, hands bound at the wrists with what looked like plastic zip ties.
A man stood before them, but had his back to the camera.
The couple was sobbing. Boyd could tell by the harsh intakes of air and how their chests were heaving up and down. The girl tried to lean over to be closer to her boyfriend. A desperate gesture, probably the last one she’d make.
Boyd’s skin went coarse and cold with gooseflesh.
He didn’t need audio to tell the girl was begging for her life as the man started to suffocate her with a plastic bag. The guy screamed, tried to fight free of his binds.
Boyd had screamed that way before, but that was a long time ago.
He looked away — it was too gruesome. Boyd used to pride himself on having a strong stomach, but he couldn’t watch the girl’s hand trying to reach out for the protection of her boyfriend. It fell lifelessly to her side as she collapsed onto her back.
Ghost Box Page 6
