Catacomb

by Madeleine Roux

  What if they went after his mom and dad? The parents who had taken him in after family after family had rejected him in the foster system? Dan couldn’t let that happen. Paul and Sandy had been so good to him. They hadn’t cared about his background. They’d treated him like a kid with a blank slate.

  “That’s the whole point,” he said under his breath.

  Abby tried to meet his eyes, but he dodged away from her, standing and turning to face the window.

  “What’s the whole point, Dan?”

  “The Bone Artists are after me for what my birth parents did. You two aren’t part of that, and you don’t have to be. You can have a blank slate. Jordan is going to need that if he’s going to keep living here.” Dan felt like he had made this speech before, but he couldn’t quite remember. God, which made him realize . . . He went to his bags and fished out his medication. At least the jerks hadn’t stolen that, too.

  He tossed back one of the pills, swallowing it dry. Then he stalked out of the room, heedless of how petulant it made him look. He stopped on the landing, hovering his right hand over the bannister while he tried and failed to outpace the thoughts fighting for supremacy in his head. His hand brushed the railing and his wound throbbed. He swore, snatching his hand back and holding it to his chest.

  A single footstep creaked on the landing floor, and then the door to the guest room shut. He felt, rather than heard, Abby’s presence at his back. Then her hand skimmed his shoulder and he couldn’t help shivering. He felt cruelly, unaccountably old. And that wasn’t fair, he reflected. He was still just a kid in so many ways. In most ways.

  “Do you really think they would come after me and Jordan?”

  Dan pulled in an unsteady breath. “Yes.”

  Her fingers tightened on his shoulder, and at last something other than fear cut to the forefront of his mind. He didn’t want to give Abby up, not now, not next year. If anything, he wanted more of her.

  “But you need our help, don’t you?” she said.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” Dan sighed, and he felt her touch recoil a fraction. “I appreciate that you’re trying to stick by me in this, but I’m worried. . . . If something happens to you, either of you, I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life.”

  And that would finish me off. He felt strung together by a weak thread as it was, pushed well beyond exhausted and frayed.

  “My parents were just trying to do the right thing,” Dan added in a whisper. “And look what happened to them.”

  She leaned into him, gradually, hugging him from behind. He didn’t dare move, afraid to startle her and ruin the moment. This was worth protecting, he thought, whatever that might mean in the end.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just put the whole damn thing on someone’s else plate for a change?” he said.

  Suddenly, her grasp around him tightened.

  “Dan . . .” She pulled away, and reluctantly he turned to face her. “What if we could?”

  “How? I mean, it’s so far-fetched. . . . A respectable city councilman overseeing a gang of shadowy thugs? Who would buy it?” He hung his head, shaking it, then he leaned onto the bannister.

  Abby grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. “No, that doesn’t matter. We don’t have to say the incredible parts. We know where he works, yeah, but we saw those masked people go in the side door of his building. What if they’re holding all the stolen bones in there? We can, I don’t know, call in an anonymous tip to the police about a fire or a gunshot or something, anything just to get them inside and looking around. We don’t have to go anywhere near Finnoway, and if it doesn’t work, then there’s no way to trace it back to us.”

  It wasn’t the most elegant plan he had ever heard, but it was better than looking for proof in the files, which had amounted to nothing so far. He held her at arm’s length, going over the idea again and again.

  “Dan, if you really think he’ll keep coming after you then I think the best way forward is to try and get him arrested. He has to be keeping the bones from the grave robberies somewhere, right?”

  “And if there’s nothing?” Dan asked. “Or if the police don’t even go inside? What then?”

  “Then we leave. Yes, even Jordan,” she said in response to his unasked question. The desperation in her voice was definitely persuasive. “Finnoway never bothered you before you came to this city. Maybe he’ll let it go.”

  Dan gave a watery laugh. “Abby, he didn’t know I existed before. Why do you think my parents left me with Crawford as my last name? They didn’t want me associated at all with the name Ash. Not that being a Crawford kept me out of harm’s way.”

  It was too ironic not to laugh. His mother had tried to save him from being hunted, but it hadn’t made a difference. Parents couldn’t protect you from anything.

  But he could protect Abby. He reached for her hand, finding it awkward to rely so much on his less-favored side.

  “I don’t know, Dan. I don’t know what else to suggest.”

  “Abby, I’ll try anything you think will work,” he said honestly. “I’m just saying, if this doesn’t work, you and Jordan need to leave it alone. You need to leave me alone. Finnoway’s after me, and I won’t let you two get caught in the middle.”

  “If only we had a contingency plan,” Abby said, turning and leaning against the bannister. “Someone must be interested in everything we’ve found, even if the locals would never see past the councilman’s charm and influence. I wonder. . . .”

  She stopped, and Dan watched her mouth move silently as she worked something out. “If we plant the idea that Maisie Moore’s death wasn’t an accident, then maybe we can get someone to care,” she said. “Like her fellow journalists at the Metairie Daily.”

  Dan followed, almost tripping on his words with eagerness. “Fellow journalists whose job it is to see connections like these.”

  “Coworkers,” Abby finished, “who would be interested in the truth.” He wanted to pick her up and squeeze her, but she was already racing down the hall and back to the guest room. “I’ll make the phone call!”

  That was when the knock came at the front door.

  There are certain kinds of knocks, and Dan knew the one at Uncle Steve’s front door was not the happy kind. A fist rattled once, twice, and then a voice drifted through the open foyer and up the stairs.

  “NOPD, open up.”

  “Probably just here to follow up about the break-in,” Abby said lightly, jogging down the stairs to get the door. Dan could still hear Uncle Steve playing the Xbox in the downstairs living room.

  Jordan emerged onto the landing, pulling on a sweatshirt. “What’s the noise?”

  “Police are here,” Abby called over her shoulder as she reached the door. “Maybe they found your laptop. Fingers crossed, hm?”

  “Don’t open it.” Dan reached for the bannister with his good hand, clutching it. “Just . . . don’t.”

  His stomach roiled, empty except for a few bites of candy bar, but feeling ill didn’t preclude the fact that he felt wrong.

  “It’s the police, Dan, I have to answer it,” she said, frowning. She was already turning the knob, and Dan knew instinctively to brace.

  The cop behind the door shouldered it open the rest of the way, knocking into Abby. He mumbled a noncommittal apology while she stumbled back.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured, grabbing the wall for balance. “Can we help you, officer? Are you here about the break-in?”

  “Yes,” he said coldly, his eyes sweeping the foyer and then up the stairs. When he noticed Dan, a shallow smile pricked at his lips. “Yes, I am. You Daniel Crawford?”

  The hairs on the back of Dan’s neck stood on end. So Oliver was right. The blood, his fingerprint, his DNA . . . He had gotten away from Finnoway once, but now Finnoway was going to make sure that it never happened again. Dan glanced over his shoulder, but the only way out besides the front door was a rickety old fire escape and then a seven-foot drop to the ground. And if he
ran, he would be resisting arrest; he had no idea what that would allow the cop to do to him.

  Wouldn’t that just be the perfect, tidy ending that Finnoway probably wanted?

  “I’m Dan Crawford,” he said, going numb. He turned and marched robotically down the stairs. Cooperation seemed like his only option. There had to be some way to CSI himself out of this; if his blood had been planted somewhere, couldn’t they tell it was squirted out of a syringe or whatever?

  “Thanks for making this easy,” the officer continued. He was tall and broad, not at all the stereotype of a doughy, out-of-shape cop. His close-cropped red hair was beginning to curl out around the edges of his cap. The little nametag on his jacket read Conlen James.

  “It’s always better when you make it easy.” The officer gestured for Dan to hurry it up.

  “What the hell? What are you doing?” Jordan shouted, racing to the top of the stairs. “What are the charges? You can’t just take him.”

  “Daniel Crawford, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tamsin Pelicie. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Officer James ran through the speech, but Dan wasn’t listening. His entire body had gone cold at the start of it, no sound penetrating his skull for an entire minute. He was drifting, falling.

  Murder? Him? It wasn’t possible. . . . Even Finnoway wouldn’t try to pin something so heinous on him.

  But it would lock you away forever. Of course he would.

  “Murder?” Abby shrieked, breathless. She crowded the door, trying to slow down the officer, but he pushed her aside easily. “How? He’s been with us all this time! He has an alibi!”

  Dan crumpled. She was wrong. There was a gap of time that nobody but he could account for. Even Oliver and Sabrina didn’t know how he had ended up at their store. For the whole stretch of morning after which he had suspiciously left his friends at the hospital, he had no alibi whatsoever.

  “That’s not what the evidence says.”

  “That was fast,” Dan bit out sarcastically, but he didn’t pause as he walked toward the door. “It’s blood, isn’t it? My blood? Doesn’t it usually take some time to process blood at a crime scene?”

  CSI, don’t fail me now.

  “Not always,” Officer James said through clenched teeth. He grabbed Dan by the shoulder and spun him around, guiding him roughly toward the door. “See, we take murder real serious in this town.”

  “As a crime or a hobby?” It was a stupid thing to say, but the officer simply snorted and prodded his shoulder, hard, letting his knuckle dig in. “I wouldn’t get cute if I were you.”

  Jordan followed close on their heels, drawing a grimace from the officer. Both of his friends stayed right with Dan as he was maneuvered out the door and down the stairs.

  “Where are you taking him?” Jordan demanded. “Dan, I’ll talk to Uncle Steve, we’ll get you a lawyer. We’ll figure something out!”

  Both of his friends were frantic now, trying to crane their heads over the officer’s shoulder to see Dan. The police car was parked half on the curb, its lights spinning silently, bathing the building in flashes of red and blue.

  “I hope your little friends don’t interfere,” the officer was saying. “Wouldn’t want to have to bring them in, too.”

  Tears gathered in his eyes, itchy and hot. This was too soon. He needed more time. There had to be a way out of this, a way to prove his innocence.

  He was so overwhelmed, it didn’t even faze him that the black motorcycle was there, its rider clad in midnight leathers, watching from behind the helmet. It would almost be weirder if the motorcyclist wasn’t there, since he or she was undoubtedly one of Finnoway’s little minions, watching and keeping tabs. Dan gave a bitter smile.

  “Take a picture,” he said. “It will last longer.”

  The fear, late in coming, slammed into him then. If only there was video, maybe some kind of security footage, that would exonerate him. But Finnoway would be careful to destroy that, too. If, if, if. He struggled, trying to shake off the policeman’s cruel grip on his arm. “Can’t you just take a swab or something? Isn’t that enough? I’ll volunteer it.”

  Which was stupid, he knew. He should ask to see a warrant, fight this, do something. . . .

  They have my bones.

  “Or a fingerprint! Can’t I do that here somehow?” His voice climbed into a terrified-little-boy register, the words cracking open with panic.

  “Nope.”

  Officer James opened the door of the car to let him in. Stale, human smells wafted out from the back, cigarettes and urine and sweat. Dan felt a strong hand on his head, forcing him to duck. It was like a dungeon, he knew, one he would never escape. His only hope was that someone at the station would listen, but who would believe his crazy story?

  “Don’t say anything, Dan! Just keep quiet! We’ll do something! We’ll get you help!” Jordan was screaming. He ran up to the window just after the door was slammed shut. The officer didn’t seem to care that his friends were scrabbling at the window, waving, tapping, just trying to make one last little connection through the glass.

  “I’ll make the call!” Abby shouted, pounding on the window. “I’ll make it!”

  Dan stared at them, trembling, his hands frozen at his sides. His voice would sound muffled to them, he knew, when he spoke the single sentence from inside: “Tell Oliver they have me.”

  Dan had never been arrested before. The last time he had been questioned by the police, he had at least had the benefit of his parents there beside him. Now he was alone, waiting in a tiny shoe box of a room with patched walls. It was almost hilarious how perfectly policey it was, with the two-way mirror and spare, metal table. The air conditioning was kicked up so high he could feel the cold of the chair through his jeans.

  He wondered if Finnoway was on the other side of that mirrored glass. Was his reach that far? Or was it enough simply to fake a break-in and plant Dan’s DNA on a piece of broken glass or a spot of carpet? Ingenious, really; once they had part of his body, they had him.

  He thought of Abby and Jordan back at the apartment, panicking, trying in vain to help him out of a situation that had no happy ending. He should have told them about Oliver’s suspicions, that his finger wouldn’t be used for twisted old magics, but for sabotage. But what could his friends truly do? If anything, Oliver and his rifle seemed like a better bet.

  The police had confiscated his phone and wallet, leaving him utterly without connection to the outside world or his identity. He would get a phone call soon and eventually a lawyer, but somehow he didn’t think that lawyer would be very sympathetic to his story.

  No, if it came to a trial, he had the horrible feeling already that he would be put in prison for murder.

  The lights in the shoe-box room abruptly cut out. Dan shivered in the piercing cold, looking up and around, trying to make sense of the shadows that pressed in on every side. It was torture. They weren’t even going to treat him like a human being.

  His wound was bothering him, the aspirin having long since worn off.

  The door to the room opened and closed in one breath, the flash of outside light cutting in so quickly he didn’t have a chance to turn and see who had entered the room before he was shuttered into complete darkness again.

  A rush of cold brought every hair on his body to attention, and then a face emerged across the table, growing out of the darkness like a pale and deathly flower. He had never noticed how much Finnoway’s head, with its sparse hair, square jaw, and high cheekbones, resembled a skull.

  “You,” Dan said weakly.

  “In the flesh.” Finnoway smiled at him, breezy, the lights sputtering back on, but only lighting the room enough for Dan to see to the ends of his hands. “Speaking of, I hear you’re missing a bit of that.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  Finnoway sat on the edge of the rectangular metal table. His suit was black, making him melt into the edges of the murky
darkness. He had tucked a briefcase under one arm. Clucking his tongue, he wagged a finger at Dan.

  “Now, now, careful with those baseless accusations, son.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Dan growled.

  “But that’s what you are,” Finnoway said casually, opening the briefcase and balancing it on one thigh. “You are whatever I say you are. You are whoever I say you are. My son, my nephew, my paper boy . . .” He tossed a single piece of paper onto the table and it spun out toward Dan, landing upside down. Dan reached for it, twisting the edges so he could read the print. A birth certificate. His.

  “Where did you get this?” he stammered, yanking his hands back as if scalded.

  “This is going to be a real education for you.” Finnoway rummaged in the briefcase again, this time bringing out a stack of photographs. He laid them out one at a time on the table. “There’s a bin under the table if you need it.”

  Dan soon understood why. The photos, playing out in chronological order, made his stomach clench in horror.

  “Micah was a good boy. A loyal boy. Oliver tries to be, but he’s a predictable failure, given his idiot family. You know, when Oliver turned you in, I thought you were just a stroke of luck. Here comes Danny Ash,” he said playfully, almost giggling, “the last little loose end to be snipped. But it’s worse than all that, isn’t it? Micah was one of us, and you watched him die. You did nothing while he was murdered.”

  Dan’s throat felt like sandpaper. He couldn’t speak or tear his eyes away from the pictures being lined up in front of him.

  “And now you’ve gone and murdered my assistant, Daniel. That was very bad of you.” Finnoway’s smile endured, as did his singsong tone. “You see, here is where you wrestled her to the ground. Tamsin was strong, but you’re stronger, aren’t you? And this one is where you punched out a few of her teeth. When that didn’t satisfy you, the pliers did. There are a lot of teeth in the human mouth, more than you might expect. It takes a long, long, agonizingly long time to pluck out all thirty-two.”