A Little More Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “Is that what the green square above the handle meant?” I asked.

  “She’s like this all the time. The questions just never stop,” Anna said defensively, her head protruding over my shoulder as she leaned forward, her front touching my back. With her this uncomfortably close I could detect the faintest scent of aftershave. I was pretty sure it was the same one Jason had been wearing. Or had I smelled it on the Ken doll? Anna wouldn’t have been messing with the Ken doll though, would she? He had doused himself in it, so maybe she’d just walked past him. But then it was most likely Jason’s, since her lipstick was on his collar. I leaned to the side and twisted around to stare at her mouth. Was that the same colour red? Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. Had anyone else been wearing lipstick in the group? Didn’t Petal say Katie had used red lipstick? What if it was Katie’s lipstick? Would they let her wear it while she was imprisoned here? What if Alex was right and he had seen her in the morning? What if it was Katie that Jason had tousled with and she’d killed him?

  “There’s that confusion again,” Oz said, pointing to my face.

  “Who would know about this protocol?” I asked.

  “You see?” Anna threw up her hands in frustration but the space was so small she knocked a shelf and toppled a couple of bottles of window cleaner onto me.

  “Thanks, Anna,” I said and considered bending down to pick them up but that would’ve meant shoving my bum into Anna and putting my face at roughly waist height to Oz. Neither was something I was in the mood to do.

  “Staff members,” Oz said, pulling my attention back to the moment. “People in positions where they are responsible for others. They would’ve informed Anna when she registered you for the tour.”

  Anna? How long had Anna known about this tour? Maybe another responsible adult was helping Katie?

  “We need to go and find a policeman. Preferably not Johnson.” I pointed to the door Oz was standing in front of and had the briefest thought that he always seemed to be standing in front of doors I wanted to get through. Literally and metaphorically.

  “Why?” Oz asked and I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination but he seemed to straighten up or square his shoulders or something, because suddenly I could see a lot less of the door.

  “Alex saw Katie this morning. What if she somehow knew about the protocol and killed Jason so she could escape?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Anna snapped. “Why would you listen to someone who’s been committed here? He’s probably on a cocktail of drugs. Or he thinks that’s what you wanted to hear so he told you that.”

  I raised my arms in the widest shrug the small room would allow and spoke to Oz. “She could still be in here. We could catch her before she escapes.”

  “She’s already escaped!” Anna snapped.

  “Has she? Just because they can’t find her doesn’t mean she’s not still on the premises,” I said. I wanted to whirl around to face her but because of the limited space I had to shuffle. It wasn’t exactly the dramatic effect I was going for. “Exactly how did she get past those guards at the metal matchbox of death and open the bolts on both sides of the door to escape without being noticed? All she would need to do is find somewhere to hide overnight and wait until the tour came through here today, kill someone and then tunnel out through one of these escape closets.”

  “You’re not listening to this?” Anna asked. I glanced over my shoulder to see Oz backing out of the room.

  He pointed to me but spoke to Anna. “Take her home. If I’m not back in time, please take her to her GA meeting as well.”

  “Oz?” Anna yelled as he closed the door and his footsteps retreated along the corridor in what I was pretty sure was a sprint. Anna focused her annoyance back on me. “He’s going to look like a fool! Are you happy now?”

  “Really? Is that a fool for catching Katie before she escapes or for hiring a murderous adjustment companion?”

  “What?”

  “How did your meeting at lunch go? It was cancelled, right?” I had no clue whether it had been cancelled or not, but seeing as how she was wafting aftershave at me every time she moved and it was possibly her lipstick on Jason’s collar it seemed like a good guess that was how she’d spent her lunch. “Is that how Jason ended up with your lipstick on his collar?”

  “Actually, the meeting went fine, hon,” Anna said and pulled her notebook from her pocket, flipping through the back pages. “We covered a great deal of new methods to help with adjustment. And I have no idea how Jason got lipstick on his collar. Mine or someone else’s.”

  “Really? Is that what you’ll say when Johnson asks you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” There wasn’t really much more I could say to that. “Who was at the meeting?”

  “You mean who’ll provide me with an alibi?” Anna asked.

  Before I could continue with my super awesome interrogation technique someone knocked on the door. Anna and I froze. Were we supposed to open it? It wasn’t like they couldn’t open it from the other side. And if we were inside the cupboard we should be able to tunnel away in the event of an emergency. I twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.

  “Ms Sway. Fancy seeing you here,” Officer Leonard said with his usual amiable smile.

  “Were you just waiting around outside?” I asked.

  “Actually, I was eavesdropping,” he said with an apologetic nod. “I’ll need a private moment with your adjustment companion. I trust you can get yourself home?”

  “Okay, but I just need to let Oz know,” I said.

  “That’s awfully forthright of you, Ms Sway.”

  “I’m trying to be a better person,” I said with a shrug.

  “I’ll only need but a moment with Miss Rivers. She’ll be back with you before you even realise she was gone. How about you get yourself home and I’ll tell Officer Salier if I see him before I’m done? He’s running around at the moment trying to find a patient we all thought had escaped. He had an interesting theory that she was possibly still here.” I knew Oz would claim the idea as his so as not to draw any more necessary attention to me, but Officer Leonard’s expression said he suspected the idea had come from me. I didn’t know how or why he’d think that, though. Or why he wasn’t joining the search.

  “Oh. Okay, well, I’ll just be on my way then,” I said but Officer Leonard stepped forward and placed a hand on my arm before I could go.

  “Actually, I was hoping to use this cupboard for a chat with Miss Rivers. There’s another cupboard a few corridors over. Second right then first left.” Officer Leonard used hand signals in case I didn’t know what left and right meant.

  “Can’t I just use this one before you have your chat?” I asked.

  “I’d prefer you to use that one. You know to look for the green square?” he asked and I nodded. “Second right then first left,” he said, doing the hand signals again.

  “Fine.” I sighed and stepped out of the cupboard.

  “That’s a lovely shade of lipstick, Miss Rivers,” I heard Officer Leonard say as I headed along the corridor away from them and before the click of the cupboard door closing echoed off the walls.

  “Guess we weren’t the only ones who noticed that, after all,” I mumbled to myself, as I turned down the second corridor on the right and paused. There were doors on either side of the corridor, each with a little peep window. Underneath each window was a name.

  “Are these people’s rooms?” I had no idea who I was asking since there was no one around to answer me. I wandered along the corridor reading the names on the doors. “Maybe Officer Leonard directed me the wrong—” I paused outside a door with a name I recognised. Katie.

  Okay. Now. The place was crawling with police because of the dead nurse I’d just pulled out of a closet. How bad of an idea would it be to search Katie’s room? With Johnson circling like a vulture to arrest me for something, anything, it would be a terrible idea. It would be an awful idea. And, really, the police would’ve already sear
ched it, right? So what could I find that they hadn’t? And what would I even be looking for? It would just be stupid. And pointless. And yet my hand still reached out for the handle.

  “It’ll be locked,” I whispered, trying to convince myself not to try. I turned the doorknob. It twisted under my request. I let go and the door swung open. I shut my eyes. “Please, please, don’t let there be a dead body in here.”

  I squinted my eyes open and quickly scanned the room. Happily, there was no dead body waiting for me. It said something about my afterlife that I had to say that quick prayer before I opened every door. I checked over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching and quickly stepped inside. I pushed the door to without actually closing it. It had been unlocked but maybe the rooms automatically locked at a certain time or some magical afterlife voodoo knew when someone was inside. I did not want to get locked in a crazy woman’s room. How would I explain that to Oz?

  I stood in the centre of the room and turned in a circle. There was a single bed with a grey blanket against the left wall. Against the back wall stood a three-shelf bookcase filled with romance novels and flush against the right-hand wall was a tall, single wardrobe. That was it. There was nothing else in the room. I crouched down and dragged my fingers across the spines of the books, scanning the titles as I went. Now that I was in the room I didn’t really have a clue what I was looking for. It wasn’t like she was going to have left a detailed escape plan for me to find with a list of her accomplices and people she intended to kill. I searched through the books as well as around and under the bed. Nothing.

  I turned to the wardrobe. It was relatively empty but even then, it was still fuller than mine. I swiped the clothes to one side and began searching for hidden compartments. Nothing. Then I remembered where I hid my mobile phone. Maybe she hid something under her wardrobe too. On my hands and knees, I peered underneath. The flooring was linoleum and there were no cuts in it that I could see, so she’d not made a flap to conceal something. But there was what looked like a little sprinkling of plaster dust on the floor right against the skirting board.

  It wasn’t a major discovery but it was more than the nothing I’d found everywhere else. I stood up and inched the wardrobe out slightly.

  “Oh, score!”

  Two words were gouged into the plaster on the section of the wall the wardrobe hid. They were different sizes and by the discolouration and depth of the gouges they’d been made at different times. “Remember Lily.”

  I moved the wardrobe back and checked behind the bookcase. Same deal. I had no idea what it meant but it definitely meant something. And who was Lily?

  There was nowhere else to search so I poked my head out of the door and made sure the coast was clear. I darted out of the room and pulled the door closed behind me. Which way had Officer Leonard said? Second right then first left? I continued along the corridor and took the first left. Just as I turned the corner I heard footsteps coming from the other end of the corridor. Thinking it might be Officer Leonard and maybe I’d gotten my left and right confused after all, I peered back around the corner. It wasn’t Officer Leonard; it was Burt. I straightened up and pulled back around the corner out of sight. I wasn’t technically doing anything wrong at that precise moment. Officer Leonard had told me to come this way, but it was still probably best not to advertise the fact I was wandering around a mental asylum unattended.

  I was about to scurry away and try to find the green squared door before Burt caught up with me when his footsteps faltered. I paused. Should I check what he was doing? Why would he be doing anything worthy of being spied on? He worked here. Sabrina had just infected my brain with her curiosity. I peered around the corner. Burt hovered outside a door with his back to me. He checked both ways along the corridor and I reared back just in time before he caught me spying.

  There was a faint creak, a pause and then another creak. I looked back around the corner. Now that he wasn’t blocking the way I could see the name on the door of the room he’d sneaked into. It was Katie’s room.

  “Well, isn’t that interesting?”

  Chapter Seven

  I was waiting in the grounds of the fort for Sabrina to show up for our Ghostly Acclimatisation meeting. The purpose of the nightly meetings was for us to learn all about our new ghostly abilities and how to be better ghosts. Mainly I went for the free tea and biscuits. And to see Sabrina. Oh, and because they were mandatory.

  After waiting to see how long Burt had stayed in Katie’s room I’d hotfooted it to the green squared door and tunnelled straight to the fort. I’d thought about going home but then I’d decided, since it was only half an hour until the start of the meeting, if I tunnelled straight to the fort I could bathe in the evening sunshine. I know Oz had said to go home but, well, I had no good excuse other than I wanted a few minutes’ peace.

  “You’re here early,” Sabrina said when she’d finished tunnelling and became a fully solid version of herself. She stepped away from the stone marker and turned in a circle as she crossed the grass to my patch of sun. “And alone. How did that happen?”

  I gave her my best flat look as she sat down on the grass next to me. “Can’t you guess?”

  Sabrina’s eyes darted to the horizon while she thought about it, then turned back to me, excitement shining out of her face. She covered her heart with one hand. “I love you so much. I would die of boredom here without you.”

  “You’ll probably die of a blow to the head here with me,” I mumbled.

  “Is that how they died? Again?” Sabrina asked and her mouth twisted in disgust. “Why do they keep killing each other like that? What is wrong with these people? Wait, who died? Was it at the asylum?”

  Sabrina sat quietly as I filled her in on all the events of the afternoon. And the bits from the morning that I hadn’t had a chance to tell her. We watched other members of our GA group appear and head inside the fort.

  “That sounds like quite the eventful afternoon,” Sabrina said when I was done. Since the majority of our group had arrived, we got up, followed them inside and headed straight to the tea and coffee station at the back of the hall. “I have a few problems with your theory of Katie hiding somewhere inside the facility, waiting for the opportunity to kill someone and then waiting until their body was found as a diversion to escape.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I asked, loading up my plate with custard creams and heading toward the back row of seats. I nudged the chairs with my foot so we’d be in a better position to catch the sea breeze from the back door.

  “It just feels a little easy,” Sabrina said, sitting next to me. “Especially with Alex seeing her that morning. Maybe Alex killed Jason and is subtly blaming it on Katie.”

  “Why would Alex kill him and blame it on Katie? Subtly or otherwise?” I asked and then the expression on Sabrina’s face told me I shouldn’t have asked.

  “Well, now, that’s what we have to find out, isn’t it?” she said and gave me a pointed look before nibbling on her digestive.

  “Why do we have to find this out? Why can we leave it to the police?” I asked and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew why. “Because the police are inept.”

  “Exactly,” Sabrina said and pointed a digestive at me. “Although, I do think it’s more likely that Katie was simply hiding with the intention of somehow sneaking out with you guys when the tour left. The tour happens on the last Wednesday of every month so she’d know the routine.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, but it was like the maladjusted version of Noah’s ark. It was all two by two. There’s no way she’d have been able to sneak out with us. The guards check your visitor pass on the way out as well as in, which she wouldn’t have, and they’d likely recognise her.”

  “Well, that puts her squarely back in the frame,” Sabrina agreed.

  “So, can we agree the homicidal escaped mental patient is our killer?” I asked, daring to get my hopes up that this was just going to be open-and-shut. Easy. All
we had to do was catch her.

  “I hope not,” Sabrina mumbled. “And remember Jason had Anna’s lipstick on his neck.”

  “Katie used to wear red lipstick. Could’ve been hers,” I said and sipped some of my tea.

  “Did you see any in her room?”

  I hesitated. “No, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have any and it doesn’t mean she didn’t kill him.”

  “You used to be fun.” Sabrina nibbled on her digestive, sticking her bottom lip out like a child who wasn’t getting their own way.

  I sighed. “Don’t you think it makes more sense? She’d gouged ‘remember Lily’ over and over into the walls. Maybe when she ran out of space she decided to escape to find a new wall to gouge her memory list in to. So, she kills Jason because she knows that will initiate the emergency protocol when someone finds him and off she goes. In search of a new wall. Or a head to bludgeon.”

  “But I don’t want that to be true,” Sabrina said, still pouting at me.

  I patted her knee. “I know.”

  “But you have to admit Burt sneaking into Crazy Katie’s room is weird. And you said Anna and Alex were really nervous when the body was found. And that the other nurse, Gary, had been angry at Jason. And that Officer Leonard wanted to speak to Anna.”

  “Do you need an elastic band for all those straws you’re grasping at?” I asked.

  “They’re relevant points!” Sabrina snapped at me.

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded while taking a bite of my custard cream.

  “Fine. But I’m going to see what I can find out about this Lily person tomorrow. And if it’s good then we’ll reopen the investigation.”

  “‘Reopen the investigation’?” I arched an eyebrow at her. “How are you not marked as a maladjust?”

  “I’m really sneaky,” Sabrina said with a nod. “Oh, and I checked on your tour request. It was put in, processed and approved in a matter of minutes this morning.”

  “So the approval department is just efficient,” I said with a shrug. “No big deal.”