24
ANSON
Twill led us to a large space next to the kitchen.
Filled with mismatched tables and chairs, it was some kind of communal cafeteria, deserted at this time of night.
When Paul yawned, I glanced at a clock on the far wall and realized it was after ten.
We hadn’t stopped moving, and like Paul, it was catching up to me.
I was about to suggest picking this back up in the morning when I saw the wall.
The entire right wall of the cafeteria was covered with photographs, articles of clothing, newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and cards—the plaster wall itself was barely visible behind it all.
“What is it?” Vincent asked.
It’s a shrine, isn’t it, Champ? Some kind of memorial to the dead.
The missing. All those who came here and disappeared without fanfare or notice soon after?
This is where the nearly invisible people of the world went to vanish entirely.
A final stop on the path to obscurity. Father paused for a moment, considering that realization.
How long do you think you’ll need to hang around before you end up on that wall?
Not much longer, I’d bet. Feels like you’re already knocking on that door.
“This is where we say goodbye to those we’ve lost,” Twill told us in a quiet voice.
From her pocket, she removed a silver bracelet.
She studied it for several moments, then went to the far right corner of the wall and used a thumbtack to secure it in place.
Then, using a marker she found on a nearby table, she wrote the name “Emily” on a piece of tape and attached it to the wall next to the bracelet.
When Twill stepped back, she did so in silence. Her head hung low. Paul, Vincent, and I said nothing either. This was a private moment, and we knew better than to interrupt.
Maybe you should put your girlfriend’s locket up on that wall?
Tie a bow around that box, too? There’s something to be said for closure.
God knows there were many times I should have put something of Mother’s up on the proverbial wall and walked away.
I bet things would have worked out a little differently for me if I had.
Hindsight, and all that. Maybe we’d be fishing right now, you and me. You know, out at our lake.
I felt the metal of Libby’s locket under my shirt against my chest and considered taking it out, maybe putting it up on that wall like Father suggested, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I didn’t know Libby was dead. Not for sure.
I’d like to say something in my heart told me she was alive, had to be, that I could feel her presence burning there, but I couldn’t.
I just wasn’t wired that way. I did know I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
Not yet. I patted her locket through my shirt, but left it where it was.
No doubt Paul and Vincent were having similar thoughts about Kristina and Tegan.
Twill broke the silence when she told me, “You asked how I knew about the hole in the back of Emily’s head.
” Reaching up and to her right, she tapped the photograph of a teenage boy in an orange and black ball cap and Charleston Battery tee-shirt.
He was smiling at the camera. “This is Brendan, but most of us called him Tut. He disappeared about a week after I got here. His body was found two weeks later near the waterfront with the same hole in the back of his head. And this one”—she pointed at a girl with raven black hair in tight braids—“is Ebby. Ebby vanished the same day they found Brendan. The police found her last Tuesday, right outside the market, not far from where we’re standing.
She was in an alley, her back up against the wall.
Nearly identical hole. We think this guy keeps them alive for a few days, maybe as much as a week.
Then when he’s done . . .” She made a gun from her thumb and index finger and mimicked a shot to the back of the head.
I thought of the hole in the back of Emily’s head. “That wasn’t a gunshot.”
She didn’t look at me; her gaze was fixed on the wall. “I was told it was from a .22.”
“Told by who?”
“Stash said that’s what the police told him.”
I shook my head. “For a gun to make a small hole like that, the barrel has to be pressed tight against the skull. If it’s even an inch away, the hole is bigger.
When you press a gun hard against the skull and fire, it leaves a burn mark.
Always. In the hair, the skin . . . always.
Your friend didn’t have a burn mark. If I had to guess, that was from a drill. ”
She pursed her lips and frowned. “And you’re basing that on all your years as a forensic scientist? You couldn’t even figure out what killed her until I told you.”
“Well, it’s not a gun,” I insisted. “I don’t know why the police would say that. They know better.”
Why are you wasting your time with this, Champ?
Twill stared at me again, and her gaze dug into me like it had back at the morgue. “Vincent, you trust this guy, right?”
“Anson?” Vincent shrugged. “He’s weird as fuck, but he’s smart. He saved our asses a few times. Yeah, I trust him.”
She considered this for a moment, then pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. The same one she’d stashed when we were in the morgue. “That’s the autopsy report for Emily. I grabbed it right before you guys came in.”
I frowned, unfolding the page. “The medical examiner hadn’t started her autopsy yet. How could there be a report?”
In my mind’s eye, I could see Emily on that metal table, dotted lines on her chest and torso detailing where the incisions would be made when she was autopsied. Twill had gotten to the ME before he could start.
She nodded at the page. “Look at the cause of death.”
And there it was, written in neat, blocky letters—heroin overdose. That made no sense. There was no blood analysis attached; I supposed he might have run one and planned to attach it. I hadn’t seen any needle marks, though. I’d looked for those. And there was no mention of the hole in her head.
“Emily didn’t do drugs. Ever. The medical examiner listed drug overdoses as the cause of death on Brendan and Ebby, too. Stash found it in the newspaper.”
“So he lied.”
“He covered up,” Twill said. “For someone. Whoever really killed them.”
I was about to ask if she asked the medical examiner who he’d covered up for, then the image of the ME in the morgue drawer flashed into my mind, his chest riddled with stab wounds from Twill’s scalpel. Yeah, she’d asked. Same way Mother would have asked.
I found myself looking up at the wall. “Do you think there’s more?”
“Probably.”
Vincent blew out a breath and started for the door. “I don’t want any part of this. I need a shower, then I’m going to bed.”
Behind us, Paul had fallen asleep at one of the tables.
Twill sighed. “He’s right. Let’s get you guys settled. We can talk about this tomorrow.”