Chapter 24 A Charmed Life
TWENTY-FOUR
A Charmed Life
“I know what you did!” The speaker’s face is sallow and oily. His hair is to his shoulders and looks as though it’s in desperate need of a wash. He wears a black hoodie and too-baggy jeans. “I saw it.”
The room they’re standing in is small and crowded.
There’s a desk, but just barely. It’s metal with a big, old-fashioned computer monitor.
The tower stands beside it, covered in sticky notes, with a stack of folders balancing on top.
To the right is a keyboard and mouse under what appears to be a dozen scattered yellow triplicate sheets.
Two metal trays hold stacks of yet more file folders, taking up what’s left of the desk space.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.” A young man with a good haircut, wearing a button-down shirt, glances around the storage-closet-made-office. “This area is off-limits to residents.”
A dirty window is high on the wall. Apparently, this is a below-ground room.
The weak, flickering light illuminating the storage office seems to be coming from a distant streetlight.
A bookshelf is on one wall, only the top shelf of which carries books.
The rest is filled with shoddy-looking binders, stacks of file folders, a first aid kit, a couple of dusty boxes of off-brand fruit cups, and industrial-size buckets and bottles of cleansers and sanitizers.
“She’s a nice lady,” the unkempt man says. He has the look of a long-term drug user, which makes aging him difficult. “She wants to see her daughter.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you started using again?” the young man asks with a smirk. Mike. This is Mike. The voice is the same from the summer camp. “Hallucinations are common with drug use.”
“Fuck you, man! I’m clean and you know it.
” He stuffs his hands in his hoodie pocket.
The move stretches the fabric, emphasizing his too-narrow shoulders.
“I saw her with you. She needs a favor. She’s a nice lady and she hasn’t been around in days.
She only wants her little girl back. All you had to do was make a phone call or sign some shit. ”
Mike points at the door. “I told you. You can’t be here. And it sounds like you didn’t see anything. I suggest you go back upstairs if you’d like to keep your bed here.”
He doesn’t move, though. “I know she came down here to talk to you, and she never came back up. Maybe I should tell the director that.”
Mike turns his back on…Aaron, dismissing him, but his hands are fisted by his sides. Who the hell is this piece of shit to question him? He turns back with a baseball suspended in a clear box in his hand, one he snatches from the shelf in front of him.
“She’s a nice lady.” Aaron sneers. “You’ve got all these people fooled with your golden boy bullshit.
” He shakes his head, looking toward the door.
“I know your type. I’ve met guys like you who sell shit to little kids ’cuz they didn’t care if they overdose.
They don’t care about anyone but themselves. ”
“Do you honestly think,” Mike begins, his voice darker than the bright, helpful tone he usually uses, “that anyone is going to give two shits what a junkie with tracks up his arms, between his toes, and in his groin says. You had your chance to leave. Too bad you didn’t notice there are no cameras down here. ”
Aaron’s eyes go wide as he tries to make it to the door.
Scrambling, he trips on a barrel of delousing chemicals.
Mike is on him in a flash, the heavy, sharp-edged souvenir coming down hard on Aaron’s head.
Over and over, he pummels the unconscious man until only bloody pulp remains where once there was an earnest face struggling with sobriety.
“Arwyn!”
I blinked my eyes open to water running down my face. I was on the floor, my head in Declan’s lap. “What the hell?”
“Oh, my,” Dr. Ortiz said, kneeling on my other side. “Let me help you.”
“She’s fine,” Osso said, moving closer to the gurney with Hernández and Kaknu.
“She’s not fine,” Declan growled. “You expect too much of her.”
I lifted my hand to my sore cheek. “Who punched me?”
Declan shook his head, pulling me up so I was in his arms, leaning against his chest. “You were convulsing. Horrible, dark bruises started showing up all over your head and neck. I used the water to bring you out and stop the pain.”
I wiped my face with my sleeve. “Good thinking.”
“Are you okay?” Declan’s eyes were lighter, which he must have felt because he was keeping his face tilted down toward me. Thankfully, they were starting to darken back to their natural brown.
“Getting there,” I told him. “My face isn’t throbbing as hard.”
“What did you see?”
I looked up and found Kaknu watching me, his phone in his hand, no doubt recording me.
I tried to stand up, but Declan held me in place.
“I feel dumb sitting on the floor when everyone else is standing,” I told him.
He glared over my head. “Then they can sit on the floor with us.”
Dr. Ortiz moved the gurney then came back and sat on the floor beside us. He had nothing to do with any of this, but his enthusiasm was sweet.
Hernández and Kaknu sat. Osso remained standing, but he took his notebook and pencil out of his pocket.
I gestured to the gurney. “Our victim is Aaron. He was a recovering drug addict. It felt like they were in a shelter or a drug treatment center, a halfway house. I don’t know. The killer worked there.”
I reached into my backpack for a regular water bottle. My throat was dry. After I took a few gulps, I explained what I saw.
Kaknu asked, “Did either of them say the woman’s name?”
I shook my head. “Aaron said she had a little girl and wanted to see her again. That’s all I know about her.
I kind of assume she’s another victim, though.
Mike was pissed off there had been a loose end.
The killing was violent, but it felt more like he was cleaning up a trail that led to him.
He didn’t care about Aaron. Probably didn’t even know his name.
The rage seemed to be rooted in the possibility of the director thinking badly of him, of his reputation being ruined in some way. ”
“Can you tell us anything more about Mike or Aaron?” Osso asked. “Any last names?”
I thought about that a moment and shook my head.
“I couldn’t see Mike. I mean, I got his button-down shirt and nice haircut, but I couldn’t see him.
He was older than when he murdered the girl by the pond.
This felt more like a college job or right after, maybe a volunteer thing.
It didn’t seem to be about the money or helping people.
It was about shining, about his reputation, about making the right connections, and he wasn’t going to let these garbage people wreck everything he’d been working toward.
“As for Aaron, I couldn’t even guess. Addiction can age you.
You could tell me he was nineteen or thirty.
I wouldn’t be surprised either way.” I tipped my head back and forth, considering.
“If I was pressed to guess, though, I’d say he was younger.
There was something about the mixture of bravado and fear that makes me think teen, maybe early twenties, but that’s a guess. ”
“Can you draw him for us?” Hernández asked. “We might be able to match him to a missing person’s report, assuming anyone was looking for him.”
Nodding, I took my sketchbook and charcoals from my bag. “Talk amongst yourselves,” I told them. “I need to concentrate.” Closing my eyes, I got Aaron’s face in my head and started working.
Something kept impinging on his face, though. It was driving me nuts. I finally flipped the page and began drawing the face that kept pushing its way into my mind. Was this the missing woman? When I heard a gasp beside me, I stopped and looked up.
Dr. Ortiz paled. “That’s my mother.”
“Oh, okay.” I looked down at the sketch, trying to put all the images and emotions I was feeling into some semblance of order. “I mentioned that if you’re too close to me while I’m doing this sort of thing, I’ll pick up on stray thoughts.”
I rested my gloved hand on the picture and closed my eyes, looking for answers. “You were thinking about her because you’re worried. She’s been experiencing some shortness of breath. You’ve noticed it on short walks.”
I glanced up and he nodded, his eyes wide.
“She’s stopped going upstairs and has slowly moved herself into the guest room downstairs because the stairs are too much.
She wants to believe this is a normal part of aging, but she’s worried it’s more serious.
She hasn’t gone to the doctor yet because she’s not ready for a diagnosis that will change everything. You need to take her, though. Okay?”
He nodded.
“I think there’s something on her lung,” I told him.
He jumped up and left the room, pulling his phone from his pocket. Once he was gone, I flipped back to the original drawing of Aaron. I finished shading it, then tore it out of my book and handed it to Hernández.
“His hair is dark,” I told her. “But it was also kind of greasy. Still, dark brown to black. His complexion was pale and sallow with pockmarks around…” I pointed to my chin and cheeks.
She nodded her thanks. “This will help us search.”
Declan stood, pulling me up with him. “Time to go. Arwyn needs rest.” He turned me toward him and gently touched my face. “You still have a black eye.”
Patting his chest, I assured him, “It’ll fade.”
“Thank you for coming in,” Kaknu said. “You’ve given us some avenues to explore.
The FBI’s forensics team has recently begun on the remains, and they’re noting that at least a few of the bodies show dental decay that’s not in keeping with the skeletal age.
We usually see that in individuals who are unhoused.
Your vision seems to indicate we’re on the right track.
” He gestured toward the door. “I’ll walk you out. ”
I made sure I’d gathered everything—including my octopus bottle—and returned it to my backpack. Declan shouldered it for me. Osso asked him a question, so Kaknu and I ended up walking down the hall together.
“I know how to bury interviews,” he told me. “It’ll be in my report, but with so many references and footnotes, your name will be quite hard to find. In fact, if you demanded to be kept anonymous…” Eyebrows up, he waited.
“I demand that my name be stricken from the records. I only agreed to this if I remained anonymous,” I said.
He nodded. “Noted.”
A door directly to the right of me opened and a gurney was pushed out. It knocked my hip, pushing me off balance. My hand went down on the gurney to keep from falling. Unfortunately, my wrist made contact with the dirty, torn black plastic bag the orderly was pushing.
The black plastic bag, too heavy to carry, is dragged down the hall toward the back stairs.
“Stupid bitch,” he mutters under his breath. “This is her own damn fault. If she’d only waited to talk to the director tomorrow, he could have called about her fucking kid.”
When he gets to the stairs that lead to the back alley, he jogs up them and opens the back door. Looking left, right, and up, he searches for any eyes that could be on him. He’s so angry, he could punch the brick wall.
Why did she have to sneak up on him and read the computer screen over his shoulder? He couldn’t get her kid back. He didn’t have that kind of authority. He should be meeting his date for a cocktail downtown. Instead, he’s dealing with this shit. Because of that stupid bitch!
He’s already moved his car to the alley, lining up the trunk to the back door. He pops it open and unscrews the trunk light. The last thing he needs right now is anything drawing attention to him and what he’s doing.
Deciding it’s quiet enough, he props open the door and goes back down the stairs for the black bag. He’s already double-bagged her body, but he worries that dragging her upstairs might tear the plastic.
He wasn’t top of his class for nothing, though, so he collects a large plastic bin and a hand truck. He puts the bin on the hand truck, heaves the bag mostly into the bin, and rolls the hand truck up the stairs. At every bounce, he worries it’ll tip over and crash down the stairs.
He needn’t have worried. Things always work out for him.
He’s charmed. At the door, he checks the alley again.
When he sees nothing, he rolls the bin to his trunk, struggles to lift it, but gets it in.
His new gym membership is already paying off.
He slams the trunk closed, returns the hand cart to the lower level, locks up, and drives downtown.
He’ll be a little late, but he has a million crazy stories he can tell.
Wealthy people love hearing sordid tales of dissipation.
It makes them feel secure, insulated, and more than a little superior.