Anamnesis: A Novel (21 page)

“His father has been friends with mine
since before I was born. Hugh said his father had a condolence gift dropped off
at the office and we were just going to grab it.” She paused and squeezed her eyes
shut. “I’m so gullible. Why am I so fucking gullible? He used to date Kaylee.
About a year ago. He’d have her security code. Kaylee doesn’t change things
like that.”

“Calm down. You had no idea. Just go back
and tell him this is urgent and you have to help me out before you head over to
the reception, okay?”

She nodded quickly and took a deep breath.
“I can do this.”

“Olivia, wait.” I stopped her from
leaving. “If he tries to hug you, let him. He might be trying to remove the
patch and we don’t want to give him any reason to be suspicious.”

Another quick nod and she headed back. As
I predicted, Hugh hugged her again. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw him
peel away the patch as he kept her in his arms. I wondered if it had been on
long enough to make her forget the incident, and what she’d feel like coming
off it.

She returned to me and kept walking. I
followed. She was upset. I wanted to let her take the lead on this. “What do
you want to do?”

“He wanted me to go in the office for some
reason.” She was angry now. Betrayal did that to a person. “So let’s wait until
he leaves, and we’ll see what he has in there.”

We walked back to
her car and waited in hope that Hugh went to the reception as he said he would.
Olivia was lost in her own thoughts. To know a lifetime friend, who she didn’t
suspect at all, had slipped her Whiteout must be earth-shattering. So many
things had been turned upside down or straight up torn apart in her life since
I met her. I was impressed with how well she was handling it.

Then again, Olivia already had a crack in
her life she dealt with since her earliest days. Her public image versus her
life at home. The rigidity and perfection she had in her office, in her
appearance when she walked out the door. Then, chaos everywhere else.

Our brooding was interrupted by Olivia
gasping. “
Ugh
. That taste.” Her fingers went to her lips. She looked at
me. “Ethan? Where? How’d we get to the…oh, hell.”

More like oh fuck. I went to set my hand
on her shoulder but thought better of it. Olivia’s breath was shallow, her
chest barely rising and falling with each quick inhale. “You’re safe, Olivia.
You’re with me. We’re in your car.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Tell
me what happened. I need every detail.”

 “Take some deep breaths, okay? It hasn’t
been long. You haven’t lost much time. You’re coming off Whiteout right now.”

“I know I am! I don’t remember coming
here!”

Olivia was panicked, but not nearly as bad
as Kaylee had been when I first met her. Or myself, or what I imagined Skid’s
friend was like. The patch had been on her for less than ten minutes, which
indicated it was likely an extended release formula. She hadn’t received a
large dose of the drug yet, and I bet that was why she wasn’t going ballistic.

You pick up a few things about drugs after
seven years of pushing, if you’re so inclined.

“They have another delivery method for
Whiteout. Not the pills like I’ve seen. A guy put a patch on you outside the
church.”

“Who? Who did it?”

“Hugh.”

“No.” Olivia launched into the same
conversation we had less than a half hour ago. Hugh would never do it. He was a
family friend.

After I relayed the conversation I had
with her while she was under the small dose of Whiteout, she went silent. Then,
“Thanks. Thanks for saving me.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just weird. As I’m sure you
know. One second I’m walking down the street, then I’m here with you and you’re
filling in the blanks. At least I have that much, right?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“Anyway, he’s gone by now, I’m sure.” Olivia
grabbed her purse and slid out of the car. “Let’s head back.”

I followed beside her. “You have a key to
the office?”

“Surprisingly, yes. It’s only because my
dad finds it more convenient to give me one so I can run the occasional errand
for him than a matter of trust. If the alarm system deactivate code is still
the same, we should be in good shape.”

On the way back to Raven & Holloway, I
kept an eye out for Hugh but he was nowhere to be seen. If he did go back to
the reception, we’d have plenty of time to look through the office.

Olivia unlocked the front door and
satiated the concerned alarm system.

It was like every other reception area I’d
been in the past few weeks. Big desk in the middle of a well-lit area. There
were waiting chairs. Double doors flanked either side of the desk. One had
Raven & Son in a gold plaque, the other Holloway. Behind the reception desk
were glass shelves full of awards. Some were framed images, others little
statues. To our left was a hallway that offered a bathroom and an emergency
exit to the street behind the building.

“I suppose we should check out Hugh’s
office first,” Olivia said. She went to the door and pressed it open.

The room had two giant ornate desks.
Father and son, I guessed. Nothing was out of place. Pens, laptop, the obligatory
family photo. Bookshelves offered thick, hardback books that looked too
decorative to ever be read. I went to the desk closest to us. It had drawers on
both sides. I pulled open the first one and found files. They were all case
files, the kind of shit I certainly shouldn’t be looking at. Olivia went to the
other desk and started rummaging, too.

“While we were in college Hugh asked me
out a lot. We went on a few dates, but I just didn’t like him. I told him I
wasn’t interested. We were great friends growing up, but just friends.” The
story coming from Olivia was more to herself than me, but I listened. “He
didn’t take it well. He said he really thought we had something special and
he’d thought so since we were children. The whole thing was so awkward. I
wanted to stop being friends all together, but he insisted we not let our
friendship be ruined because of him. Here we are, years later. The occasional
awkward lunch date. I see him at parties if his father is there. And now, to
think what he’s been doing.”

“Don’t blame yourself for not suspecting
him. It’s not your fault,” I assured her. “I saw him; he’s charming as fuck. We
don’t expect the people closest to us to be the ones screwing us over.”

We lapsed into silence as we looked over
the files. Like the organization of the room, nothing in the documents was out
of place either. I got on my knees and ran my hands around the underside and
lips of the desk.

I heard Olivia’s heels click-clack towards
me. “What are you doing?”

“Checking for anything secret taped to the
desk somewhere, I guess.” I laughed as I groped around underneath. “Nothing to
lose, right?”

“I’ll check the other one.” I expected her
to see some humor in it, but she was dead serious as she crouched down and
started checking the other desk.

Neither of us found anything.

Olivia collapsed into the heavy red
leather chair at the desk and sighed. “What was he going to do when he brought
me in here?”

I had ideas, but I wasn’t going to share.
Instead, I shrugged and sat in the other desk chair. Fuck it was comfortable. I
leaned back and let it hug my body.

“We should check your dad’s office and the
receptionist desk just in case. I’m not sure what we’re going to find here, but
we can’t leave knowing we didn’t look everywhere we could.” I tried to veer her
off the subject. Not because it wasn’t important, but because we needed to
focus.

“Right.” She hauled herself out of the
chair and straightened items on the desk that had been bumped.

I did the same and found her at the
reception desk. It had no drawers, just a laptop, and didn’t take long to look
over.

“I’m going to stop by the restroom. I need
to rinse my mouth out. Head into my dad’s office and start looking,” Olivia
said. “Meet you there in a second.”

While the Ravens’ office was ornate and
vintage, Mr. Holloway’s was austere. The desk was made of steel and glass. Two metal
filing cabinets rested against the wall behind the desk. There was an abstract
painting of blue and white swirls that held no visual appeal. There wasn’t a single
family photo anywhere. Two blue metal chairs faced his desk. Despite the small
leather cushion on them, they looked incredibly uncomfortable.

I went to the filing cabinets first. They
were locked. His desk drawers were locked as well, save for the top right which
had a jumble of office supplies.

Just when I had given up, Olivia finally
showed up in the doorway. Her face was pale. She leaned against the door frame.

“You okay?” I asked. “You were gone a
while.”

“I found something. You need to see this.”

She led me down the little hallway in the
reception area to the bathroom. It was ten square feet at least, and decorated
more in the Raven fashion. There was a second door adjacent to the toilet. It
gaped open. I expected to see a broom closet, but it was a whole other room. It
was beat up. The wood floor was missing boards, the walls were peeling, and the
whole room was lit from an ambient glow coming from cloudy plastic hung over
the windows. Pallets of tile and constructions supplies took residence in the
corner by a closed door. Another door directly across from me was open. This
was the left side of the building that was under renovation. The two sides were
connected by the door Olivia opened.

I reached out and pushed the door shut.
The door itself wasn’t hidden. Though painted the same tawny shade as the
bathroom, it was obviously a door. It was strange, I had to admit.

“Why is this door here? It’s a weird place
for it.”

“It is. This didn’t used to be a bathroom,
it was a janitor’s closet with a sink. This is a historic building, almost
seventy years old. Four years ago the owner sublet this part of the building to
my dad for his practice and they remodeled.”

Olivia opened the door again and walked
into the room with the construction supplies. “This room provides shared access
to the basement for both sides of the building. Dad planned on removing his door
to it and walling it off, since he’d never have use for the basement and he
wanted to turn it into a bathroom, but the owner wouldn’t let him do it. Said
it would be defacing a historic part of Seattle or something.” Olivia rolled
her eyes, apparently finding the story ridiculous. “So he installed little
metal strips on the top and bottom of the door to stop it from opening, painted
over it and took the doorknob out as an act of defiance, saying it was as good
as a wall now.”

“Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
The door is open now, so that means…?”

“I haven’t been here in months. The last
time I was here, you couldn’t get through this door. Now you can. What if Hugh
was going to take me in
here
?”

“If he wanted to take you into that side,
why wouldn’t he just do it?” I asked.

Her eyebrows rose up. She brought her
fingertips to her temple. “Because, I wouldn’t do it. If we were on the street
and he suggested we go in that way, I’d get suspicious or put up a fight. But
I’d willingly come in here, then he could force me wherever he wanted once I’m
out of sight.”

It made sense. Charming Hugh wouldn’t want
to risk anyone they knew seeing them go into a shady building. If anyone did
spot them, they’d see longtime friends going into their father’s law office.
Nothing suspicious there.

I stepped into the room. It smelled dusty
and vaguely of stagnant water. The stacks of tile looked like they’d been there
at least a few months, with a thin coating of dust across them. I went to the
door by the tiles and opened it. There was a narrow stairwell. A single bare
bulb on the bottom of the steps revealed a concrete wall that went left and
right.

“There’s a light on,” I told Olivia. “Does
anyone own this building?”

“I don’t know. Do you think someone’s in
here?”

I paused and listened. If there was
someone downstairs, they were being quiet. I withdrew my gun. “No, but I’m not
taking any risks. And I’m going to find out. Stay behind me, okay?”

She nodded and kept a good distance behind
me as I started down the stairs. The temperature dropped quickly as I
descended. I became aware of the scent of piss and a coppery undertone that had
to be blood. I led with my gun, keeping it level as I hit the landing and
checked both my sides. To the left was a small, empty alcove. To the right the
basement opened up to shelves of old junk. Paint cans, tools, boxes. What stuck
out was a wooden chair in the center, a rope hanging loose on each arm and leg.

The basement appeared to wrap around the
staircase into the other side of the building. I moved close to the shelves and
strained to catch any sounds. It felt empty, but I didn’t let my guard down.

As I turned a corner, I came face to face
with fresh plywood. This half of the basement had been walled off completely.
There was a closed door in the center, with a latch above the doorknob. The
latch had two padlocks.

Yeah, we definitely found something.

I steadied my hands, willing their nervous
shaking to stop. Behind me, Olivia started to breathe faster. I dropped one hand
to the locks and inspected them. They were combination locks. And both were already
open.

Before I pulled them off, I turned to
Olivia and looked her hard in the eyes. “Olivia, we have no idea what’s in
there. You need to be ready for the worst. I’m not going to ask if you can do
this, because I know you can. Ready?”

“Yes. Open it.”

I unhinged the padlocks and set both on
the ground. Then I opened the door.

“Holy fuck.”

I expected something bad. I had a few
ideas inspired by movies on what a torture room would look like. What I saw was
worse, because it was real. My mind went wild presenting me with images of what
could’ve been done there. The suffering, the cruelty.

My hand was on autopilot. I reached into
my jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Concern for my gun set aside, I
holstered it and pulled out two Xanax. At least I thought that’s what they
were. It didn’t matter; in that moment I needed something to blur the edges. I
swallowed them dry and felt them catch in my throat. After working up more
spit, I swallowed again and felt them travel down.