The City Beneath

by Melody Johnson

  Walker conceded to leaving my apartment only after wringing a promise from me that I’d take Tylenol, ice my hip, and beeline it to my bed. That had been my general plan anyway, so it wasn’t much of a concession on my part. Finally alone in my apartment, I tucked myself into cold sheets, knowing I could have kept Walker in the apartment had I wanted. I hated myself for wanting him there, possibly needing him, but more than that, I hated myself for being too stubborn to act on it.

  The insistent trill of my cell phone startled me awake. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, but it felt like sunrise. I rolled over, reluctant to wake, reluctant to even move, and picked up the damn phone more to shut it up than from an actual desire to communicate with anyone.

  “DiRocco here,” I croaked.

  “Where the hell are you? Are you okay? Did you get my messages? Carter is going to stroke out!”

  I winced from the pitch of Meredith’s voice and tipped the phone away from my ear. The voice mail icon was indeed activated.

  “In bed; I am now; no; and we can only fantasize about such things. We’re not that lucky,” I answered.

  “Ha! We will be if you don’t get your ass to this scene,” she warned.

  “What kind of scene are we talking about?” I asked, feeling my heart quicken.

  “Triple homicide, three blocks from your apartment.”

  I winced. “I hate it when they’re close.”

  “I know. Come see for yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and winced, thinking of Walker.

  I hung up with Meredith and crawled out of bed. My hip gave its normal wake-up twinge, but its aching was substantially improved from last night. Typically, I wouldn’t have bothered with a shower, but I hadn’t bothered with one before bed, either. I was in critical need of bathing. Half an hour later, I had scrubbed the blood and sewage funk off my body, dressed, dried my hair, and listened to six voice mails—each varying between alarm, panic, and outright rage.

  Meredith’s hushed voice murmured in the first message, “Where are you, Cassidy? Pick up! We have a staff meeting in five minutes. It’s urgent, and I do not want to put up with Crabby Carter on my own. Are you there? I hope not, because you need to be here! Like, now.”

  The voice mail clicked to the next call, and I let the pillow smother my face as Deborah Rogers, our grumpy, grandmotherly administrative assistant, rasped over the line. “Is this you, Ms. DiRocco? I’m calling on Mr. Bellissimo’s behalf. You are late to work, and you are missing the budget meeting. Please call us when you get this message.”

  The moment Deborah hung up and the machine beeped, Carter’s voice blasted from the tiny speakers. “DiRocco! I’m going to assume that you didn’t show for this morning’s meeting and haven’t answered anyone’s phone calls because you’re already at the scene outside your apartment. I’m assuming this because you’re already on my radar from having written an article that needed a retraction. NYPD is on my ass about you! Did you talk to Detective Wahl? Did you ask her for the autopsy report? You are on thin ice, DiRocco, and I am not—”

  Carter was cut short by a voice mail miracle, and Meredith’s voice whispered over the phone again. “Are you okay? There’s a big scene less than five blocks from your apartment. If you get this message, just sneak in. I’m here, and I told Carter you are, too. Don’t make me a liar!”

  Beep. “—I am not going down with you when all of your sources freeze you out, DiRocco! Meredith assures me that you are with her at the scene, but she refused to put you on the line. You better be taking statements, DiRocco. Pulitzer statements to dig yourself out of the shithole you’ve dragged us all into. And I better not see so much as one mention of animals, teeth, or bite marks in this article, or so help me, God, I—”

  I deleted the rest of the messages until I scrolled to a number that wasn’t anyone from the office. The smooth, amber tones of Greta’s voice sounded through the speaker, and my gut leapt at her words: “The autopsy reports from Monday night came in. You were right. Call me.”

  I replayed the message again, and the phone shook against my ear. I closed my eyes to listen. Greta knew the bodies had animal bites. I gnawed on my lip, torn between feeling justified and nauseated. The reporter in me was itching to inform the world about my experience, to enlighten New York City with the truth about the murders, and to be the first to announce the existence of vampires; the human in me, however, hesitated.

  First of all, who would actually believe my story? Everyone would think it belonged alongside alien abductions and Elvis sightings, not alongside hard news headlines. Second, even if by some miracle the public did believe me, all vampires might then decide to hunt to kill. Without the need to hide their existence, they might forego Dominic’s slightly tamer version of feeding in favor of Kaden’s version. They’d kill without remorse or hesitation and revel in their new freedom, and the ensuing slaughter would be my fault.

  With thoughts of slaughter, blame, and potential Pulitzers weighing heavily on my mind, I buried my face in my pillow and clicked to the next message. My brother’s voice whispered breathlessly over the phone. “For shiz, sis, what’s the biz? Are you home? Meredith just called, asking where you are. Why aren’t you at work, kickin’ ass and takin’ names?” I heard him sigh heavily over the line, and his voice deepened. “I need to talk to you. It’s about the article you wrote for Tuesday’s paper, the one that needed a retraction. Call me back ASAP.”

  I stared at my cell as the voice mail icon bounced closed. Dominic had likely attacked him, like he’d attacked me and Meredith and every witness to wipe our memories of Monday night. I scrubbed my face with my hands. Dread tightened in a knot through my stomach as I called him back.

  He answered on the first ring. “Cass?”

  “Yo, bro, who else you know?” I heard him sigh over the phone. “I got your message. Are you—”

  “You’re just getting up now?” he asked. “Meredith said you were at the crime scene.”

  “Meredith has very high standards for me to live up to.”

  “This is the second day in one week that you’ve missed work.”

  I frowned. “I’m not missing work. I’m using my sick days, which I’m actually entitled to, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know, but you’re not sick. You were attacked.”

  My argument deflated along with my anger, and I gnawed on the skin around my already torn thumbnail. “Who told you?”

  “You’re not the only one who has friends at the precinct.”

  “And you’ve waited until now to call?” I asked snottily. “Your message mentioned that you wanted to talk about my retracted article. How about we just skip to that conversation?”

  Nathan didn’t respond. I heard the floorboards of his apartment creak as he paced to fill the silence, so I knew the next words out of his mouth were probably going to be a lie.

  “I’m worried about your career. Skipping work after writing that article does not look good. Your reputation is on the line. I covered for you and found you help when you were addicted to percs, but I can’t help you this time. You disappeared headfirst down the crap shoot before I even knew you’d jumped this time.”

  His words twisted through my heart because they were completely, utterly, devastatingly true, but I could still hear him pacing. I’d been clean from percs for four years. He only brought it up now to piss me off enough to trip up and admit something. He was worried, but not about my career.

  I let him stew in silence. I held the phone away from my mouth, so he couldn’t even hear me breathe.

  “And it’s not just Carter who’s pissed. The police are more shocked than angry at this point, considering your reputation, but your infamy at the precinct will only keep you afloat for so long.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Without their inside connection, you’ll be like all the other vultures gnawing the scrap leads for the juiciest morsel of printable news. Next time, Meredith might have to retract her image, and you
know how she is about her photography, especially the close-ups. I doubt you want to bring her career down along with yours, so—”

  “Funny thing about photography is that you actually can’t retract it,” I said, pouncing on his slip. He remembered seeing the close-up of the bites. “A retraction is an admission of error, but a photo itself is proof that an error never occurred.” I paused, waiting for him to admit it himself, but all I heard was the creak of his pacing. “Do you remember Meredith’s photography that matched my original, retracted article? Do you remember that particular close-up?”

  I heard clear silence from his end. He’d stopped pacing. “Why did you write that retraction?”

  “I didn’t write it. Meredith wrote it. That article did not need a retraction,” I hedged, needing him to admit it himself because saying it first, even after everything I’d seen and experienced with Dominic, still seemed crazy.

  Are you a night blood? Even as I thought the question, my mind wanted to dismiss the possibility, but Nathan was questioning the retraction. My gut knotted. I’d bet my recorder that he remembered the bite marks, and something else nagged at my memory, something I hadn’t thought of until now. Only Nathan and I had been able to hear Dominic’s rattling breaths when he’d been burned at the crime scene. Donovan had pronounced him dead and the machines hadn’t detected a pulse, but Nathan and I could hear him breathe.

  I’d always prided myself on the ability to ask the hard questions at the right moments to get the truth, but I didn’t want the truth this time. The one time in my whole life when it probably mattered most, and I choked.

  “I didn’t think it needed a retraction, either, but no one else remembers Meredith’s photography.” Nathan’s voice was brittle. “No one else remembers the bite marks.”

  I squeezed my phone and heard the plastic squeak beneath my grip. “How many people have you talked to about this?”

  “It’s ridiculous!” he snapped suddenly. “Why would Carter force you to write a retraction when you were right? It doesn’t make any sense! Who’s covering for who? Whose ass got exposed that paid to have it covered back up?”

  I closed my eyes briefly and told myself to remember to breathe. “How many people have you told?” I insisted.

  “The police are especially suspicious of the retraction. Even though they’re convinced that the bites never existed, they know and trust you, and they think you’re being blackmailed or bought or something. They think Carter’s using the hype about the bites to cover your involvement in this case.”

  “You sure have been talking to the police a lot lately.”

  Nathan ignored me. “What’s really going on, Cass?”

  I licked my lips. “What do you think’s going on?”

  I could hear his sigh over the phone, and the helplessness in its tone melted the iron-plated backbone that I’d forged throughout most of my life.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You wouldn’t believe me even if the truth bit you in the jugular.” He laughed and the noise was bitter and grating and very unlike Nathan.

  I bit my lip and finally hedged at the hard question. “Would the truth only be able to bite me after sunset?”

  Nathan didn’t say anything. The floorboards didn’t even creak from his pacing.

  I forced myself to laugh. “It’s an expression.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You don’t get out much,” I said, feeling unfathomably disappointed. I covered my eyes with one of my hands and dug the heel of my palm over my face.

  “I won’t anymore,” Nathan said, gravely serious. “Like you said, not after sunset.”

  I stopped breathing. He knows about vampires, I thought.

  I swallowed and cleared my throat before speaking. “We need to talk. In person. Before the sun sets again. Tonight.”

  “Yes,” Nathan said, and that single word poured through the phone like an unbearable mound of ice had melted from his shoulders.

  “I need to catch up with Meredith at the crime scene, but we can meet after work.”

  “Yes.” I could hear his smile.

  “I’ll come to your apartment, and we—”

  “No,” he said suddenly. “I’ll come to your apartment, and—”

  “No,” I said, thinking of Dominic. Nathan and I needed to settle somewhere safe after sunset. I’d given Dominic permission to enter my apartment, and now that I believed in vampires—I groaned to myself—I doubted my fancy new locks would deter him in the least. “I need you to trust me. We need to stay in and stick together tonight, and it can’t be at my apartment.”

  “I agree, but it can’t be at my apartment, either.”

  “Why don’t you want me to stay at your apartment?” I asked, and I couldn’t hide the pain in my voice. There had only ever been one time that I wasn’t allowed in his apartment. The feelings I’d buried where they belonged seeped between the cracks in my anger. My breath hitched.

  “Cass, it’s not like that. You know I trust you, but I—”

  “I need to come over to your apartment tonight. We need to stick together, and we need to lock ourselves in at sunset,” I said in a rambling, blurted rush. “Please. Nathan, I—” My throat was tight and aching from trying to dance around the truth. I swallowed down the tears and choked. “I’m scared.”

  Nathan sighed, and it sounded as horrible as I felt. It was a long moment before he spoke. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Okay,” I said, wanting him to say more.

  “I’ll see you at seven,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, knowing something wasn’t right at all. “You know that I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t—” I began, but he’d already hung up.

  Chapter 5

  This crime scene, like the majority of the cases I’d covered through the years, was an obnoxious, disrespectful audience on the outside—media trying to shine spotlights, snapshots, and squeeze statements—and an efficient, well-rehearsed play on the inside. Every officer had a part to play. Every media member, on the other hand, was vying for the same role, and everyone wanted the lead.

  Meredith was shooting angles of one of the three victims. This particular victim was male and on his belly, as if he’d been crawling away. He had endured multiple stab wounds to the back and calves. Other photographers surrounded him, too, attempting to snap the same angle Meredith was shooting, so I bided my time until she finished.

  A few officers who walked the beat near my block made it to the scene. They were on the other side of the street, behind the tape with, presumably, the other two victims. I nodded at them when our eyes met, and they nodded back. Another officer from Greta’s precinct was standing with them. He turned to see whom the others were acknowledging, and I recognized him and his salacious grin as Officer Harroway. He waved me over.

  Wonderful, I thought with a groan. I ducked under the police tape toward the officers, glad to have been summoned but wishing it had been by any other officer. Harroway had a knack for flirting while simultaneously twisting the knife on our shared history that I found uncomfortable. Although my temper usually dissuaded unwanted attention, my snappy attitude only made Harroway try harder. The more he tried to sweep me off my feet, the more I walked away unswept. The more I remained unswept, the more he flirted. He was handsome in a block-jawed, solid, manly-man kind of way that most women found attractive (and I loved), but he came with the matching personality (which I hated).

  I think my biggest problem was knowing that when a situation got hairy, he would freeze. He would cover his own ass instead of watching my six, which was how my hip took a bullet. Maybe his instincts and attitude had changed since then, but he still walked a beat while Greta had advanced to detective. The department had a long memory, and so did I.

  “Cassidy DiRocco,” he said, enunciating the consonants in my name so he sounded like a sports announcer. “What brings you here on this fine Friday afternoon? ‘Shining light on Brooklyn’s darkest secrets,’ as usual
?”

  “Well, it’s certainly not the company that keeps me around, Officer Harroway,” I jibed.

  Harroway winked. “Lies do not become you.”

  I grinned. “If you know so damn much, why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”

  “The truth bites, DiRocco,” Harroway said innocently. “I’m not sure you can handle it.”

  The knife slid between my ribs, cold and swift, as usual. I couldn’t even stab back because Greta obviously hadn’t made the autopsy report public. For all intents and purposes, I was still the crazy who’d reported animal bites. I narrowed my eyes and did what I did best when I couldn’t win; I got angry.

  “You call me over just to jerk my dick, you’re wasting both our time,” I snapped.

  Harroway laughed. “Got your panties twisted tighter than usual this afternoon, I see.”

  “Keep dreaming about things you’ll never see, Harroway.” I stepped aside in the hope that Meredith had finished her shots.

  “Aw, come on, DiRocco, loosen up. It’s a Friday, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You sure know how to sweet-talk a girl,” I threw over my shoulder.

  “It’s another local gang fight, fourth so far this month,” he said, pitching his voice lower, so I’d have to turn back. “How sweet does that sound?”

  I stopped walking, stared at Meredith ahead of me still taking shots, and cursed under my breath. I should have known I’d never escape from Harroway that easily. I turned around and stomped back toward him and his smug grin.

  “The same gang?” I asked.

  Harroway nodded.

  “How do you know?”

  “Would I steer you wrong?” Harroway asked, looking wounded.