Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) (17 page)

39

The cell closed in on her. The walls seemed to move, and several times Sarah had to close her eyes and pretend she was somewhere else. A beach, or the open fields of Pennsylvania. Paris, a place she’d never been, also had a magnetic charm, and she dreamed of visiting the Eiffel Tower one day.

A prisoner was brought in. Two guards held onto him, and he was kicking and spitting, shouting disgusting profanities as they dragged him to a cell. The prisoner got one arm free and swung, catching one of the guards on the jaw. The other guard slammed him with a baton.

The prisoner collapsed, and the guards panicked. They seemed to think they’d killed him, and that was what it looked like to Sarah. He wasn’t moving and didn’t appear to be breathing.

“Shit,” one of the guards said, “shit, shit, shit. What’d you do that for?”

“He hit you.”

“So? You don’t kill the sumbitch.”

Sarah closed her eyes and opened them again, loosening the bonds of her mind. A sharp, burning sensation gripped her brain, as though her skull was suddenly too small for it. The prisoner wasn’t dead. She would be able to see it, or at least she thought she could.

Suddenly, the man gasped loudly and spun onto his back. From the wild look in his eyes, she could tell he had no idea where he was or what he had been doing. The guards, relieved, chuckled to themselves, and then they picked him up and headed another direction. “Come on. We’ll let the infirmary take care of him.” Everything had happened in less than a minute.

Sarah lay down on the cot and closed her eyes. Everyone she loved was put in danger at some point. Her own mother and sister had been killed because of a case she was involved in. Her father had abandoned her and lost his wife, leaving him utterly alone. This “gift” destroyed everything it touched. She hadn’t seen it before, but she saw it now. She was a walking curse.

Tears came again, freely and uncontrollably. She couldn’t stop them even if she’d wanted to. Someone down the corridor, another inmate, began loudly sobbing as well, mocking her.

Briefly, Sarah thought about what it might have been like to hang herself in a jail cell. She thought it was something of her own conjuring, an image of a sheet hanging from one of the rafters and the body, cold and swaying lightly, rigid and pale in the center of the room. But the throbbing in her head and the chill in the cell that gave her goose bumps told her otherwise.

She opened her eyes and saw him.

A man hung from one of the rafters, a sheet wrapped tightly around his throat. It was the same body she’d just seen with her eyes closed. The man looked at her. The blood vessels in his eyes had burst from the pressure of hanging, giving him black eyes with crimson centers. The jail clothing he wore told her this had happened a long time ago. It didn’t look modern. Instead, it was thick denim, and his hair was slicked back in a style from forty or fifty years ago.

Sarah watched him sway. He was aware, his eyes were moving, but he didn’t care enough to say or do anything. Complete apathy.

Apathy had always been death. Much surer than any other emotion, apathy was what led one down a path of self-destruction… And it was the only emotion she recognized in herself right now.

“What did you do?” she said out loud.

The man made a choking sound, a strand of dark blood dribbling out of his mouth and down his lips. “I killed.”

Sarah saw it as clearly as if she had been there. The man had grown up on a cattle ranch. As a child, when his alcoholic mother chased him for a beating, he hid in the carcasses of dead cows. One day, she saw a small calf that he was particularly fond of. He’d even slept in the stall with it. His mother caught on that he felt sympathy for it and ordered that it be slaughtered. She made him watch, crying the whole time, while the calf was butchered. After that point, he would sneak into the slaughterhouse frequently and watch the animals skinned and strung up, their guts pulled out of their bodies and flopped onto the floor.

His first kill had been a prostitute. He strangled her and strung her up on a tree, not unlike the manner his calf had been strung up. Sarah saw three girls…

“You killed three of them?” she said.

The man, as far as he could, nodded.

“Why did you kill yourself?”

He croaked, “That was what I was doing anyway.”

Sarah felt as if she had ice water in her veins. That was what apathy really was. It wasn’t death; it was suicide.

She wouldn’t be killing herself, not today. And she sure as hell wouldn’t let Gio die in the process, too. No matter what had happened between them, no matter if she saw him after this or not, he had been there for her when she needed it, and she wouldn’t forget that, or him.

She rose and stood at the cell door. Stefan might’ve been right: everyone was a mix of good and evil. Everyone had something to hide. “Guard,” she shouted. “I need you.”

She waited a few minutes, and nothing happened, so she shouted again, and again, and again. Finally she heard boots and the rattle of keys. A large female guard with a face like a bulldog stopped before her. The guard grimaced as if Sarah had woken her from sleep.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Sarah closed her eyes and let down every guard she had spent months and years building up. Every reaction, every rationalization, every trick she had learned to keep her mind occupied was abandoned in an instant.

The pain felt as though she had fallen into a cauldron of melted steel. It burned up and down her arms, her fingertips, her face, and scalp, so much so that she could smell her flesh burning…

She saw the guard and the woman standing behind her, a woman in a jail uniform. Sarah opened her eyes, and the woman was there. Pale, almost blue, her eyes veiny and red, her hair falling out in clumps, her nails black and long. Pockmarking her outfit were bullet holes.

“What did she do?” Sarah said.

“Who?” the guard responded.

The woman behind her growled like an animal. Sarah didn’t have to ask; she saw it. It happened first in the showers. The guard cornered the woman, slamming a baton into her stomach, toppling her over. Another time, in an office, she took out her knee, and another time in a kitchen, the woman was maced. One day, the woman couldn’t take any more, and she tried to escape. They shot her four times.

“She died because of you,” Sarah said.

The guard didn’t respond for a moment. “Who?”

“What’s your name?”

The dead woman snarled and then said, “Nubi.”

“Nubi,” Sarah said. “That’s a pretty name.”

The guard’s face went slack. She went pale, and her eyes widened as she took Sarah in.

“I know what you did,” Sarah said. “That’s why Nubi tried to escape. You beat her for fun.”

The guard shook her head. “I don’t know who that is.”

Nubi snarled again. “Tell her I see her in her house. I see her there, and I’m there watching her. I watch her, and I know what she does.”

Sarah swallowed as she felt the dribble of blood on her upper lip. “Nubi wants you to know she watches you at home. She knows what you do there.”

The guard took a step back. “I don’t… I don’t do anything.”

“She knows.”

The guard’s face turned from terror to anger. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I haven’t done nothin’, now keep your mouth shut unless you wanna go in the hole.”

“Robert Umba,” Nubi said.

“She said the name Robert Umba.”

The guard stopped. She froze right after a step and kept her eyes forward, unable to look at Sarah. The fear and trembling had returned. The name had hit a nerve. Slowly, she turned and caught Sarah’s gaze.

“What do you know about him?” she said.

“It’s her son,” Nubi said. “I know where he is.”

“She says she knows where he is.”

The guard, unable to move for a second, now rushed forward until their faces were a few inches apart. “Where?”

“Let me out and I’ll tell you.”

“You’ll tell me now.”

Sarah shook her head. “No. Let me out. I need to get out of here. You can let me out and give me a day before you report me.”

The guard had tears in her eyes. “Where is my son?”

She said it so pathetically, so full of dread and hope, that Sarah, despite the circumstances, couldn’t help but feel for her.

“Where is her son?” Sarah said.

Nubi smiled. “He ran away from her. He saw the men coming and going in her bedroom. He would watch from the closet, and she wouldn’t know he was there, and then one day he ran away.”

“Where is he, Nubi?”

“He’s dead.”

Sarah was quiet a second. She turned her gaze back to the guard. “Let me out of here, and I’ll tell you where he is.”

The guard, after taking a few more seconds, fumbled with her keys and then unlocked the cell. She slid open the door, and Sarah stepped out. “I need my clothes and my phone.”

The guard nodded. “I’ll let you out on overcrowding if you tell me where he is.”

Sarah hesitated. The guard hadn’t even asked how Sarah knew what she knew. There was so much pain there, she didn’t care. If there was any chance at getting her son back, she would take it. She looked at Nubi, the malicious grin on her face, and said, “You’re lying.”

“Tell her!”

“No, you just want to hurt her. Where is he, Nubi?” Sarah took a few paces toward her and stopped. “Where
is
he, Nubi?”

“She deserves to be in pain.”

Sarah shook her head. “You’ll never find peace if that’s all you want. You’ll just hang onto it. Please, tell me where he is.”

Nubi looked at her. Her eyes had a hollowed-out look, empty, as if she had glass eyes. Her eyes closed, and Nubi began to sob. Sarah reached out to touch her, but her hand simply glided through her.

“He was my fiancé. That’s why she was so mean to me. She was so mean…”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry life gave you nothing but this.”

“We had a house in Felt. We were in love, and I got sent here because of a dope charge. She hated me. I don’t know if he’s there or not. I… I can’t do anything but follow her. I can’t go anywhere else, I have nothing else.” She looked up. “What’s happening to me?”

Nubi wept, and Sarah felt a pain in her gut as though she’d been punched. This woman didn’t know she had died.

“Nubi,” she said softly, “you’re dead. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, no, please no.”

The guard had stood frozen. Now she swallowed and said, “What did she say?”

Sarah looked at her. “Get me my phone and my clothes and I’ll tell you.”

The guard led Sarah through the jail. The jail was the worst place Sarah had been. It was old and had dozens, if not hundreds, of deaths. Sarah saw women sitting in their cells, and right next to them were other women or men who looked just a little off—something about them, maybe their color. The dead weren’t as vivid as the living.

Nubi had gone. Sarah couldn’t even imagine the torment. The woman didn’t know she was dead but understood that something was wrong.

After changing in the guardroom, the female guard handed her phone back along with some release papers and a court date. She had been released because of overcrowding and would have to appear for court in two weeks. Sarah still wasn’t sure what exactly they were going to charge her with. The official citation said, “Creating a public disturbance,” not assault, but that didn’t seem like the type of thing that would land someone in jail.

Once they were outside the jail walls and Sarah could see the sun shining down on them, she stopped and turned to the guard who had followed her out. “You were cruel to her.”

The guard looked down. “She got my son involved in drugs. That’s why he ran away from home. Did she tell you that?”

Sarah shook her head. “She was killed because of you. She would rather have risked her life than take another day in this place with you.”

The guard didn’t look up. “Please, just tell me where my son is.”

“They had an apartment in a place called Felt. He might still be there.”

She nodded, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. “Thank you.”

Sarah turned away. The woman revolted her.

As she walked away into the parking lot, she called Stefan.

“Hey, where you been?” he said. “I’ve been trying you all day.”

“Where’s Gio?”

“I don’t know. I thought he was with you.”

She stopped. “He went for Gio.”

“Who?”

“The man who made the
Murder 42
video. He has Gio. He got him from his hotel last night.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Stefan, you have to find him.”

A long silence. “You sure about this?”

“Positive.”

“The hotel might have a camera.”