Found You (5 page)

And thought about day five.

With each ring of the telephone, Dave’s chest tightened a little. Maybe she wouldn’t be home. Maybe she was working. It was, after all, long past happy hour and well into any barfly’s night of drinking, and he knew that nowadays she had a pretty good gig tending bar in California at a nightclub called Constellation. Part of him was glad she wasn’t answering the phone. But another part of him, an achy part somewhere under his heart, just beneath where he was willing to admit he could feel, really missed the sound of her voice. The way her hair smelled. The softness of her shoulders. The shape of her mouth when she smiled. The way it felt when he slid into her.

The phone bleated again, and he felt a crick in his chest.

She answered on the seventh ring. Dave switched the receiver to his other ear to wipe the sweat off his palms.

“Hi, Dave. How you holding up?”

Dave shrugged, even though she couldn’t see. “Hanging in there. I got your message—you know, returning my call.”

“I’m so sorry, Dave, really I am.” Her voice on the other end of the phone was so soft, so far away.

“Did…did the police tell you how it happened?”

“They told me what they knew.”

“What did they say?”

Dave sat down on the sofa. What they’d said was just about too horrible to repeat. What they’d said was unthinkable. What they said without even knowing it was that he’d failed his sister. He’d let her die. That in spite of all his best efforts, in spite of all he’d done—all
they
had done, especially that night at Feinstein’s house—it hadn’t been enough. Her clock had been stopped for good.

“They said she left her room, wandered across the quad, and…you know that white door, the one with the rusty hinges that’s always locked? Somehow she got it open and then got lost in the catacombs beneath Oak Hill. She fell through a part of the floor, I think. Broke her neck.”

“Oh, Dave. God, I’m sorry,” she repeated.

There was more—a word, smeared in her blood, a word that reminded him of a horrible monster in a black trench coat and a black hat. A single word: HOLLOW. But he wasn’t going to tell her about that. He’d do something finally worthwhile for her and leave her out of that completely.

“Funeral’s tomorrow,” he said.

“Wish I could be there.”

Dave couldn’t tell if she genuinely meant it or if she was just being polite, and an ache in that place just beneath his heart made him close his eyes for a moment. “I wish you could, too, Cheryl.” A pause. “I miss you.”

Silence from her end of the phone.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. I miss you, too, Dave. It’s just—”

He knew what it was. His insecurities ignited broody bouts of jealousy. His fears made him quiet, cold, and distant. He’d thought he could be better, that he could shrug off the guys that hit on her constantly at the bar, that he could let her in and talk to her about Sally or about that night at the Feinstein house…

“Dave?”

“Sorry. Sorry, I was just…I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t. Look, you know I’m here when you need me. Always. We’ve…been through a lot together. But…”

She didn’t say it; he wanted to believe she didn’t because she wanted to give him hope, but he didn’t really dare think that. “
But you and I can’t be together. I can’t be
doing all the reassuring, all the communicating, and all the
things that make it a relationship
.” Fact was, whether she said it or not, it didn’t change the reality of it—the finality of it.

Instead, she surprised him with, “It’s…not like before, is it? Sally’s death, I mean. It has nothing to do with…before, right?” The pleading in her voice, so earnest, so innocently hopeful, made him feel a little queasy.

“
It was a word, Mr. Kohlar. HOLLOW. Does that mean
anything to you? Anything significant about that word?
”

“No,” he tried, and then cleared the lump from his throat. “No, nothing like that. Just an accident. You know, just…bad luck. Bad locks on the door and bad luck all around.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Although he couldn’t see her, he could imagine from the relieved breath on the end of the line that she had worked up a small smile. He was glad for that, glad to set her mind at ease. He couldn’t be what she deserved in a boyfriend, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t at the very least keep her from reliving the nightmare of seven months prior.

“Cheryl, I should go.” A pause. “It was good talking to you.”

“You too, Dave. Take care of yourself, okay?” She sounded thoughtful. Sad, maybe. Just a little. Maybe.

“Will do.”

“Call if you need me.”

Dave stifled a long sigh. “I will. You take care of yourself out there, too, okay?”

“Sure, hon.” Whether she’d slipped with the pet name or meant it with mild friendly affection, it still made him feel warm inside.

When she hung up, though, the cool rush of loneliness came back.

The scream from the jail cell jolted Steve from deep concentration. He looked up from the files he’d been studying and looked around the precinct. The busy chatter, the ringing of phones, the interrogation of witnesses continued as if no one had heard a thing. Steve frowned and turned back to his file. It was a missing persons case, a probable suicide by Steve’s estimation. Based on the evidence found, the missing person in
question, one John Peters, had gotten up and by appearances had gotten ready for work, just as he did every morning. He’d put on a suit, however. One was missing from the closet, and friends remarked at the oddity, as John’s job at the warehouse was necessarily casual in dress. John had poured himself a bowl of Cheerios with milk and a cup of coffee, both of which he’d left unfinished on the kitchen table. And then he’d left the house in his red Toyota Celica and had never come back.

They found a patter of blood left on the floor, thinned to the occasional drop out in the hallway, and also a partial print in blood—his—on the wall at the base of the stairs.

Steve had noticed an uncanny parallel between that case and the death of Sally Kohlar. They’d found something on the second floor of the Peters residence. Spelled out with painstaking care on the bedroom carpet at the foot of the bed was part of a word: HOL. The tiny strips and chunks of flesh he’d used to spell it out in large Roman font were already dried and crusted to the carpet fibers.

The scream from downstairs came again, louder this time. It had the quality of someone being hurt, of someone, Steve thought, feeling the slow turn of the knife. He panned the room, looking for verification, looking for another startled face or disrupted phone call or anything. No one in the precinct reacted to it at all.

He rose slowly and headed for the door to the lower level, where the jail cells were. He passed Sharkey’s desk, and the detective looked up.

“Told you Mendez’s coffee would go right through you, New Guy.”

Steve gave him a distracted nod. “Yeah.” He continued on to the door, pulled it open, and slipped through. Pulling the door closed behind him cut off the sounds from the precinct. Cinder block walls sloped down to the basement. His feet slapped against the paint-chipped, pale green concrete stairs as he jogged down, the echoes bouncing all around him.

Lakehaven didn’t have a high crime rate, and so Lake-haven Police Department’s jails were neither as large nor as packed as someplace like Rahway. They remained cool and relatively quiet, and rarely contained anyone wildly crazy or dangerous. The lower level of the police station featured a narrow hallway of the same pale, chipped concrete and five cells lining the left-hand side.

There should have been prisoners in four of the cells: in cell one, a DUI sleeping it off, and cell two, a possession with intent to distribute. Cell three should have held two teenagers busted for boosting GPS systems and satellite radios from cars at the Lakehaven strip mall parking lot, and cell four should have contained a domestic battery.

There should have been prisoners.

But Steve’s heart sank to his gut as he passed cell after cell. Every single one was empty. Evidence of their occupants remained, things like baseball hats, a flannel shirt, and a watch. But the drunk, the dealer, the crooks, and the batterer—they were all gone.

He tried rattling the cells and found them all locked. He gave one of the bars a good, sharp tug to see if it
would open. It remained planted firmly in place. He peered in between the bars. The gloom inside was thick enough to shadow figures, but not so dark that they could hide. Steve could see without a doubt the cells were empty. On the floor by one of the cots, a shoe lay on its side in a sticky mess of something dark.

Where could they have gone, and how? Could they have been through booking already? Processed and sent on their way? Not likely. Not without their shoes or their watches. The crooks had only been arrested two hours prior, and the DUI had only landed in the cell twenty minutes before Steve had heard the first scream. No, no, something wasn’t right, not at all.

“Shit. Shit!” Steve threw up his hands and headed back toward the stairs. He had no idea how to explain this to anyone. Five prisoners utterly vanished from four cells? He’d look like an idiot. Great first impression. LPD Funny Guys 1, New Guy 0.

He got as far as the bottom of the steps when he heard laughing, low, musical, soft, and terribly wrong in ways that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

He turned slowly and made his way back, his footsteps thundering with his heart in his ears, his chest tightening as he turned his head to look into each penned-in dark. He expected someone behind one of the sets of bars, someone with crazy eyes, a foaming mouth, maybe, and rotten teeth. Someone who smeared words into walls with blood or stripped flesh off bones to write sinister messages that stank and dried like beef jerky and stuck to the rug. Someone who whispered over shoulders then vanished from a room full of cops.

He found one cell after the other empty. Except cell five.

A figure in a black trench sat with legs tented up on one of the cots. Light from the window slanted in just across the peaks of the knees and the black gloves that rested on them. A black hat, pulled low over the head, obscured the face from view.

A chuckle came from beneath the hat, dripping menace.

Steve clicked the safety off his gun and took a cautious step toward the bars.

“You don’t need to do that, Steve,” the voice—voices, actually, woven together, male and female—told him.
Just like at Oak Hill, in the catacombs
.

“Who are you? And how the hell did you get in there?”

“I’m here to do horrible things, Steve. Unspeakable things. And I can be anywhere, any time.”

“Do I know you?”

“You will.”

Steve frowned. “I think you better identify yourself.” His hand closed around the grip of the gun.

The legs swung over the side of the cot, and the head tilted up. It had no face. Steve recoiled back a step. “What the fu—What are you?”

Although it had no mouth, he was sure beyond doubt that it smiled.

“I’m your death, waiting to happen.”

“Is that a threat?” Steve found he had trouble forming the words.

“I am threat, plain and simple.”

His gun at the ready in his hand, he tried to peer into the other cells again, hoping, he supposed, that he wasn’t alone. Even the company of drunks and disor-derlies would provide some anchor to the real world, some reassurance that there had to be an explanation that made sense.

The cells so far as he could see were still empty. “Where are the others?”

“In some other place. Some otherness.” It stood, and Steve raised his gun at it.

“What did you do to them? Did you let them go?” He chanced a quick glance at the stairs, hoping someone would assume New Guy was lost and come down looking for him.

“In a manner of speaking.” The words seemed over his shoulder, around his head, clearly the will of the thing in the cell, although detached from it. He flinched away from them, his full attention again on the black figure.

“Where are they? For the last time, where are the others who were in these cells?”

“They’ve run off. Off to tell the world your secrets. Off to tell your police friends all about you. All kinds of interesting little things about you.” It laughed.

Steve felt a rush of heat to his face. Sweat broke out under his arms. He tried to level the weapon at the thing in the cell, but the barrel shook slightly.

“You have secrets, don’t you? Everyone does.” It clapped its gloved hands together in delight, but they made no sound, not even the muffled slap of leather. “Ohhh, I know a lot of secrets about a lot of people. Things they think but don’t say. Ways they act when
they think blind eyes will be turned. Do you know what Sharkey’s friends did for him when he was fifteen? They beat the hell out of a fragile boy named Andy Franco with some sticks they found in the woods. They gave Andy two broken ribs, a black eye, a busted wrist, and a twisted ankle. He needed four stitches across his forehead and a new school when they were done with him. They did it for Sharkey, see, because he told them Andy was a ‘faggot.’ He never told them Andy liked him. And he never told them it made him feel kind of nice that someone—even Andy—thought so much of him as to write him a love letter.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Steve suddenly felt light-headed. He slumped against the wall across from the monstrosity. It took a few steps closer, coming within breathing distance of the bars (if it breathed, and as it stood there, its chest still, its faceless composure sinister in its blankness, Steve got the further sickening notion that it didn’t), but it didn’t touch anything. It shoved its gloved hands in its pockets and tilted its head thoughtfully.

“You know what your boss says about ‘those damn whining liberals and fucking queers’ at any given Christmas party after a few rounds of eggnog? About what he thinks of gay marriage and about the time he let those kids go because after all, they were only kids, and all they’d done was ‘rough up a queer a little, scare him a bit, no real harm done’?”