Epilogue
Phoebe Handler
“Oh, Adrian,” I muttered to myself as I looked up at the old theater. It took a lot of effort, weeks of work, but I found him. My partner, the man who could have one day been my brother-in-law. My friend, once upon a time.
No one was aware I’d started looking; an entire task force set out on a different floor of the precinct, myself excluded because of the history I shared with him. But we all shared a history. Adrian was a well-liked detective before he left us.
Before everything went so wrong.
But I beat them. Pushed aside and threatened with extended leave when they caught me going through their files, I beat them.
He’d covered his tracks from most, buying this place under a false name, but I knew him too well. With just months working together as partners, I had him figured out. They were right about that, I guess, that I was too close to him, but it would have been useful information, not detrimental.
Idiots.
I spoke to his new colleagues, learned about how bad things had grown in the prison, from COs being murdered by inmates to nurses quitting in one big walkout after the riot when they were given no updated safety measures.
Sally Collins, a nurse, and the only person from the prison who would actually give me the time of day, led the walkout, citing budget cuts and poor treatment of both staff and inmates as their reason.
As far as I knew, a bunch of temps were brought in and nothing changed apart from some lost jobs, but it showed me the culture of the place.
Of course things could go so wrong. Sally told me she was retiring early and not to give her another moment’s consideration. Only when I pushed did she tell me she suspected something might have been going on with Adrian and Karner, that he was too interested in her, and she was too focused on him.
She sighed when she spoke of them, like the thought exhausted her.
My heart felt heavy as I stepped up to the once grand double doors of the theater and gave them a firm rattle.
The sound of chains on the other side told me I’d never get in this way, so I turned away, back down the wide steps and around the building.
This was a shitty neighborhood now, dilapidated and worn out from years of underfunding, this building fitting right in amongst the deprivation.
There must be a way in.
This building was too old to be secured tight.
It was dark out, night well underway, clear and starry, common for this time of year. When Adrian and I were out on late nights, it annoyed him; those stars brightening everything up, making it harder to be sneaky.
He wouldn’t listen when I told him it made life harder for the criminals, too.
After about twenty minutes of testing side doors and sighing at too-small windows, I found my in. A crack in a window near my feet. One kick and the whole thing would shatter.
“Shit,” I said, that heart heaviness growing when the glass clattered inward, noise raining through the still night. The absence of life here was apparent, shouting out like ghosts. No lights, no sounds, just dust and dark, shadowy corners.
I slid into the basement and kept going.
The world needed to learn.
Was Adrian with his brother now? Was Penelope free? Of life or bars. I never hated her, saw her for the sick woman she was. Though she’d murdered the man I’d been falling for, I didn’t hate her.
Not like Adrian did.
Jake, as ever, pained me. A person so vibrant and sweet, dragged down into his brother’s world in the worst way possible. I’d been on the path to loving him, I think, when it happened. And I grieved him like he was the love of my life, even if we’d only had months.
Goddamn, this was a shit show.
Rubbing my chest, I climbed from the creepy ass basement and found myself in a hall. Dust again, dark again, silent again.
Nothing.
But I followed my gut toward the front of the building, the theater proper where years ago smiling faces and giggling children would have filled every space.
The scent of rot hit me first. Before I saw them.
Nostril burning, stomach churning rot that intensified with each step I took closer to the cluttered stage. Dark brown stains splattered the floor, a strange contraption of looped rope hanging down.
But the rot grew, stinging my eyes, killing any sense of hope I might have had.
Two of the seats, right at the front, were filled.
“Adrian,” I sighed, because there he sat.
There they both sat. Half skeletal, skin sliding, flesh bloated gray and green and purple. I held back a gag and stepped back, covering my mouth.
But I couldn’t look away from the sight: two bodies tangled together, so decomposed they were morphing into one twisted being. Weeks. It had been weeks since I spoke to Adrian on the phone and knew for sure he had her.
And these bodies were not fresh.
Adrian broke when Jake died; that much was clear to anyone who paid him even a modicum of attention. Penelope Karner was broken from the moment she was born.
And now they were together.
Rotten to their cores.