Chapter 10
TEN
Damp air heaved into his lungs. The pavement pounded against the soles of his feet and reverberated through his legs—Seth knew it was counterintuitive to be both a smoker and a runner, but he hadn’t started paying the price yet.
He pushed forward on the sidewalk, amazed by how dead downtown Fairview was at this hour. Not a soul in sight.
But this was more than midnight cardio. Nothing got him back into character like his high school playlists in his ears—Interpol and industrial rock.
He caught his reflection in the window of a closed business.
With his black hoodie on, sweat sticking his hair in clumps to his forehead, skin damp, eyes bloodshot, he looked like himself again. Who he used to be.
The type of guy who wouldn’t think twice about going into an abandoned building full of strangers, as long as it meant he could get a fix.
As Claire said, a dilapidated house occupied the corner of Weston Street, covered in graffiti and boarded up windows, wedged between two commercial buildings that probably hadn’t seen a business in years.
Seth crept up to the building and tugged out his headphones, embraced by the street’s ambiance; the hum of a radiator in the next building, the distant chirp of crickets.
There’d be a point of entry somewhere around here, and he found it along the side of the house.
Darkness swallowed him as he entered, along with the smell of mold.
He was standing by a staircase, looking out into a living room. No signs of life.
He turned to his left, up the stairs. There.
Each step creaked and threatened to break beneath his feet. On the upper level, he found the bones of the house exposed. Some of the walls had been caved in, others stripped entirely.
When he stopped to listen, there was breathing.
Mattresses spread throughout the floor. People slept on some of them, curled into themselves, their bodies spindly and thin. He carefully stepped over them as he walked deeper into the room.
He knew how they felt. How blissful it was to lie there on a mattress in a room full of strangers and drift off into the bright, warm nothingness. There was no pain in that place, but it wasn’t real—it was this. It was death. He had to remember that.
By his feet, an old man with graying hair mumbled something. His eyes lulled open, landing on Seth before they closed again.
“Hey man, I’m looking to score,” Seth whispered. “You know who can hook me up?”
The man mumbled something else. Seth knelt down and gently nudged him.
“He doesn’t like it when people touch him,” a voice said, and Seth spun around.
A girl, probably no older than eighteen, with unkempt brown hair peered at him like a ghost, half coated in darkness. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, but something on the wall behind her caught the moonlight from outside.
Words, carved into the exposed wood in jagged lines.
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME
“Who wrote that?” He pointed toward it, and the girl’s eyes followed before they fell back on him.
“I’ve seen you. You’re a cop.”
Well, undercover wasn’t going to work here. He gave up the act and brandished his badge from his pocket. The girl staggered back in fear, but he held up his hands.
“Homicide. No one’s in trouble, I’m just here for information. I need you to tell me about that writing on the wall behind you.”
The girl glanced at it, then blinked at him like she was expecting something else.
Seth dug into the pocket of his hoodie for his pack of cigarettes, pulling one out. Interest lit on her face as he offered it to her. She snatched it and held it close like it was something precious.
“The writing,” Seth said. “Who wrote it?”
“Some weirdo.”
“You saw him?”
“Not really. He had one of those pandemic masks on. Eyes were brown, maybe, like yours.”
“That’s just the lighting.” His eyes were blue, so the man’s could’ve been anything. “Did you know him? Maybe you’d seen him before?”
The girl went quiet again, ogling the pack of smokes he hadn’t tucked away. He handed her the whole thing.
“Maybe I’d seen him. I figured he was one of the guys who hung around here.
He came in looking for a hit, had a bit of cash.
I remember it ’cause we were all nodding off, but there was this…
scratching. Real irritatin’. When I woke up, I saw the writing on the wall.
” She nodded at the old man on the mattress.
“Son of a bitch stole all Charlie-boy’s stash. ”
“His stash of H?”
“Mm-hmm.” She fidgeted with the cigarettes, flipping the pack over and over. “Charlie had a few bags of it, but by mornin’, they were gone, and so was the weirdo. So we know it was him who took it. Never seen him since.”
So, he hadn’t bought the drugs. He’d stolen them.
Which implied, at least for now, that whoever was dealing drugs in Fairview might have no connection to the murders—or murderer—at all.
“When was this?” Seth asked.
“Two weeks ago? Enough time for Charlie-boy to find a new… I mean. Yeah, two weeks ago.”
If that were true, then this could be the killer. He’d been here before he’d ever killed Eliza Johnson. Was this where he’d concocted his plan to murder them, or had it already been in his mind?
Seth took out his phone and found a picture of Eliza, then flashed it to the girl. “Have you ever seen this person here?”
“Not here, nope. Know who she is, though. Lady who got murdered. She didn’t hang around our crew. Not like we wouldn’t have her, she was just a bit of a loner.”
He flipped to a picture of Kelsey. “And what about her?”
“Hmm… nope.”
Seth tucked his phone away, frustrated. He felt close to the killer—standing in the same damn room he’d once been in—yet he still had nothing. A place like this saw too much traffic; even if he could get forensics in, the evidence would be compromised.
“What else can you tell me about this guy? Was he older, younger? Tall, short?”
“Not too old, but he wasn’t a kid either.
He had this bad energy around him. I can pick up on that kind of stuff, ’specially when I’m high.
My mind opens up to a whole new dimension—people have colors, and his was real black.
Not like yours. You’ve got a calmness around you, maybe blue. Not light blue, though. Dark.”
When he was a teenage addict, he might have found that deep, but he saw things for what they were now. The “colors” she saw were not from another dimension—that was probably her intuition.
It was a longshot, but he asked, “Do you think you could identify him in a lineup?”
“I mean, yeah, prob’ly. I’d sense his energy again.”
“What if I could get a sketch artist in? Would you be willing to work with them?”
“What, like, at the cop shop?” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re gonna have to give me more than a few high-end smokes for that one.”
“You know I can’t give you cash. How about a stipend for some groceries? Actual food for yourself and the people here.” He motioned around the room. There were at least five others, passed out and probably high.
She kicked at the floor, fidgeting with the pack more, before she nodded. “Maybe, but I ain’t making any promises.”
“I know. What’s your name?”
“Isabella.”
“Okay, Isabella.” He fished a card from his pocket and handed it to her. Hesitantly, she accepted it. “I’ll come find you when I have an artist. Until then, if you see that guy again, I need you to call me or find me right away. He’s dangerous. Whatever you do, keep your distance.”
“Sure. I’m trustin’ you. Only ’cause of your blue aura.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch. And just so you know—we’re gonna have to be watching this place in case he comes back.”
Isabella nodded in understanding. It was as friendly of a warning as he could give her. He wasn’t here to punish them for being addicts, but the other cops might feel differently.
Without another word, Isabella retreated into a different room.
Seth peered through the doorway, where she curled up on a mattress, surrounded by a pile of books and a teddy bear.
If she had dark blonde hair like the killer liked, she’d probably be dead.
He wished there was something he could say to wake her up—to wake all of them up—and tell them life can be more than getting high, but he also knew how it felt for this to be all there was.
It was a choice, but it didn’t feel like one.
Seth would be lying if he said he never missed it.
The things he saw on this job kept him up at night.
He hadn’t slept much since becoming a homicide detective, but whenever he took a killer off the streets, the world felt less evil, if only for one day, and it helped fill that hole inside him. It helped remind him.
Refocusing on the wall, he took a few steps closer. The words sharpened into view. Crudely carved, whoever did this had treated this plank of wood the same way he’d treated two women’s bodies. As though they were his canvas.
He pulled out the replica of the murder weapon, a 0.6-milimeter boxcutter, given to him by the coroner this morning. He jutted out the blade, then slotted the edge of it into the S on the wall.
A perfect fit.
Claire had never been comforted by the rumble of her dad’s truck beneath her during the rare nights he wanted to drive her home. She hugged herself in the passenger seat and watched the streets of Fairview skim past the window.
“You didn’t have to drive me, Daddy,” Claire murmured.
He gave her nothing more than a grunt. The streetlights caught on the silver of his beard as he turned a corner.
He’d been quiet the whole ride, the type of quiet he only ever got when they were alone together. He’d insisted on driving her, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was livid with her.
It still confused her—his protective nature over her, but also his control. Did he love her or loathe her? Were both possible? Claire wasn’t sure. There were days she felt the need to protect him, days she thought to herself that maybe things weren’t so bad here.