Chapter 13. Reed
Reed
The next morning, Tessa and I stand side by side, the imposing concrete-and-brick entrance to the police department stretched out before us.
The building looks like a fortress: two stories, ringed by fencing, with dark glass automatic doors.
They slide open for the occasional beat cop hauling in a cuffed suspect or lawyers from the DA’s office toting briefcases and speaking animatedly about plea deals and trial dates.
“Are we sure we want to do this?” she asks. “Do we even want to know?”
I nod. “Yeah. We want to know.” It’s been eating away at me all night. Who stole my future from me? From us? I’m determined to find out.
“Okay. I guess we look for a homicide department or something.”
As we reach the automatic doors, I pause, waiting for them to slide open, but of course we don’t register. “Here goes nothing,” I mumble as we step through the glass.
Inside, the space is just as utilitarian. There’s a large wooden reception desk at the entrance with an officer standing behind a plexiglass window, scribbling on a form. Rather than check in, we drift through a locked door into the back offices of the precinct.
Being a ghost has its privileges. I’m finding I no longer need to take doors or walls at a run. I can either choose to smack up against something or imagine all the space between atoms and simply sift past another structure. It’s a question of intent. Do I want to have form or not?
The downstairs offices are bustling. Some cops are typing up reports; others appear to be getting briefed in a back room.
“Now what?” Tessa asks me. As if I’ve ever been here before. As if I have a clue how any of this works.
“I guess we … wander around, see if we overhear something?” I turn to head past the desks in the closest aisle in the hopes of picking up on some conversations when a female officer yells behind me, “Hey, Anderson, what’s this about you crying like a baby over that YouTube video with the hatching chicks? ”
The room erupts in laughter. Anderson begins to respond from my right, “That’s not what happ—” when suddenly, the female officer, holding up her phone with the video in question, plows straight through me.
Dammit, not again.
The room becomes ice cold. My brain slants sideways.
I can’t remember why I’m here, or even who I am.
I’m consumed. My entire world is a jumble of memories.
She’s having a secret affair with her supervisor.
There’s a lump in her left breast she’s having biopsied next week.
She wants to save up to buy a house, but it always feels out of reach.
Wait, or is that me? I can’t always tell what’s hers and what’s mine. Make it stop, I think.
“Make it stop,” I hear her whisper. And then it’s over, she’s past me, and I crumple to the floor as she sinks into a chair, shaking and shivering, on the verge of passing out.
Several people rush over to help her, including her supervisor, his brows pulled tight in concern, probably hoping she keeps their secret.
Cool hands wind around my waist, attempting to lift me to my feet, with no luck.
“No, I need a minute.” I shake my head, teeth chattering.
“We have to get you out of here. It’s too crowded.” Tessa begins tugging on my arm, indicating an empty corridor off to the side.
“Wait,” I say breathlessly, as I scramble unsteadily to my feet. “It’s upstairs. That’s one helpful thing I saw. She’s a detective. That’s where we want to go.”
Tessa edges me toward the stairs, her arm wrapped tightly around me, hugging me to her side. It’s difficult to walk like this, but I don’t care. I like it here beside her too much.
I know she thinks I’m a shitty person; she’s said as much.
But something feels different with Tessa now.
Like we’re finally on the same side. It’s probably wrong to let my heart hope, but there have been some signs.
At least, I don’t think she hates me anymore.
Like that time we both wound up in detention after she threw a book at my head for asking “too many rude questions” during her presentation on radioactive isotopes.
Or the death glare she gave me when everyone laughed because I said her eighth-grade winter formal dress looked like an upside-down pineapple. Which, in all fairness, it did.
So I was a little idiot. We both were. Can’t people get a second chance?
“I’m beginning to see why ghosts wander around at night. There are fewer people to run into.” Tessa’s eyebrows are crinkled in worry.
“And here I thought they liked moaning in the dark and dragging chains around for fun.”
“Your snarky humor’s back. That’s a good sign.”
“I’m okay. Honestly,” I reassure her with a smile, pleased she finds me funny. “Thanks for the help.”
Her hand slips, landing on my hip, and both our eyes track it. She quickly releases me. “Of course.”
The awkwardness between us rushes back full force.
Everything unsaid last night hangs heavy in the air.
Is this what we both want? Or are we merely the only two people around, scared and searching for comfort?
She fidgets with her fingerless gloves while I toe the floor with my sneaker, willing myself not to stare at the arms she had wrapped around me moments ago. They’re good arms.
And shoulders.
And legs.
And … now I’m staring.
Stop being weird.
I drag my gaze away, landing on a bulletin board along the back wall. “Whoa. Are those our pictures?”
There are only a couple people here and there, hovered over computers or on the phone. It’s easy to navigate a route. There are several photos pinned to the board, ours and those of a few other people who must be under active investigation.
“Okay,” Tessa says. “Let’s spread out. Check out people’s desks, peek over their shoulders at computers, see what you can discover.”
We take off in separate directions to snoop.
It would be far easier if we could pick things up, but we can only look at open files, active computer screens, overhear conversations within earshot.
No one is discussing us, and as far as I can see, no one has conveniently left out evidence on their desk for us to peruse.
“Any luck?” I shout across the floor to Tessa, realizing there’s no need to be quiet or sneaky. No one has any clue we’re here.
“Nope. This guy is writing an email to his mom. And the lady behind him is on the phone about another case.”
I head back to the bulletin board. I’d only really checked out the photos before, but there are a few reports tacked to one side. I take a closer look. They’re from the coroner’s office. “Tessa, I might have something here.”
She rushes over.
“It’s an autopsy report. This one’s for you.” I swallow.
The report is dense. It’s hard to know what I’m reading at first. “A toxicological analysis and gas chromatograph, whatever that is, were performed and proved negative for cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates, arsenic, and strychnine.”
Tessa’s voice is close, near my ear. “There were high blood alcohol levels detected, but they don’t think that was the cause of death.”
“So, what was it, then?”
“Oh God,” she mumbles. “Look at the coroner’s notes here.
The larger vessels of the brain were distended with dark-colored blood.
The lungs were filled with air from an obstructed condition of the respiratory organs, appearing significantly darker in coloration than natural.
” She shivers. “Some stranger cut into my lungs. My brain.”
“Our brains,” I counter. “A shame, too. They were good brains. Well, mine was, anyway.” I smirk at her.
“How can you joke around right now?”
“What else are we going to do? We can’t change the situation. All we can do is try to understand it. Except, without finding our files or being able to turn the pages of this report, we could be out of luck.”
“I don’t know … maybe we can still understand it. The autopsy determined my pupils were considerably dilated, and down here it says tropane alkaloids were present. See, Toxic levels of tropane alkaloids, atropine, hyoscine, and hyoscyamine detected.”
“What is that?”
“Well, I did ace AP Chem. If I had to guess, I’d say it sounds like we were poisoned. Dilated pupils can be a sign of overdose but also of poisoning.”
I cross my arms, quirking my head to the side. “Are you, like, a … forensics expert all of a sudden?”
“What? My dad watches a lot of CSI. Plus, these compounds are toxic at the level they detected in us.”
“So, someone drugged us?”
“Well, not with a synthetic substance, no. These are organic compounds. I think we ingested something toxic.”
“I didn’t eat anything at the party—did you?”
“No. Which means …” Tessa points at me. “I was right about Jenny. It must have been in our drinks and she had the perfect opportunity with that game.”
“Maybe … but not the motive.” I rub my chin. “It’s got to be someone else.”
“As I recall, you also got us drinks.”
“Right …” My eyes narrow. “But I didn’t kill us, so what are you implying?”
“But didn’t you grab cocktails other people made at one point?”
“I did. But they were making them for themselves, so I don’t think they were poisoning them. Maybe somebody roofied us later when we weren’t looking.”
“Who wanders around with toxic compounds to slip into drinks? The factory guys?”
“Those guys are a bunch of tools. Maybe they’d deck you in a bar fight, but poison?
None of it adds up.” I knock my head a couple times against the bulletin board.
Then I pull back with a start. Someone’s scribbled something in black ink up the side margin of the second page.
“There’s something written on the next page.
” I step aside so she can peek. “There … in the margin.”
“It looks like it says homicide with a question mark, but underneath it there’s something else.
” She presses her face as far against the wall as it can go, but since we can’t move the paper, we’re stuck with only the scribbles that are visible.
“I can’t make out the full word, but it looks like it also ends with i-c-i-d-e followed by another question mark. ”
“Homicide homicide?”
Tessa rolls her eyes. “I don’t think they’d write homicide twice.”
“Why not? It was a double homicide.” I chuckle to myself. “What, too soon?”
She give me her best “I’m not amused” face.
“All right. Focusing.” I lean against one of the cubicle desks.
“Pesticide?” she offers. “Did we somehow ingest poison that way?”
“No, that doesn’t make any—” I pop up. “Shit. What about suicide?”
Our eyes meet.
“That could be it,” she says slowly. “And if they’re unsure whether this was a homicide or a suicide, that means they might eventually throw out the case and then whoever did this gets away with it.”
“Okay. So, we don’t give up. We keep digging. Figure out who it was.” I turn back to the report, but it’s suddenly harder to read. The bulletin board is limned in shadow. “Did it suddenly get dark in here?”
“Someone must have turned the lights off.” She glances around, but everyone’s still at their desks behaving normally. There are a couple cops chatting by a water cooler, another on her phone. No one is acting like anything is odd.
A chill prickles up the back of my neck. Or is that the temperature dropping?
“Look at the windows.” Tessa nudges my shoulder.
The fog is back. It’s billowing against the glass, slowly engulfing the building, a rising tide. Frozen crystals spread along the panes, icy fingers come to claim us at last. My breath catches.
“It’s them, right? They’re here.” My normally deep voice comes out as nervous breath.
A chorus of whispers winds its way up to our floor, full of desperation and unquenchable need.
Tessa’s eyes dart around wildly. “They followed us.”