Already dead, p.24
Already Dead, page 24
A job that may require Melissa to obey maybe one or two more commands.
“What is she like?”
If it had been anybody else asking this question, Chase would have glared at them, but there was no ulterior motive with Melissa.
She just wanted to know how a person, a child, whom she loved dearly, was faring. And Chase, even in her darkest hour, would have found that difficult to hold back.
“She’s smart,” Chase said softly. “Georgina’s smart, really smart, down to earth, funny. Stubborn… fuck, she’s stubborn.”
Melissa smiled and asked nothing further. Speaking about Georgina was painful for her as well.
“Are we close?”
Melissa stared out the window and Chase saw the woman’s lips moving as if she were silently reciting directions.
“A left,” She pointed at an even smaller road that was nearly completely obscured by shrubs. “There.”
Chase turned onto the dirt path.
The brush was thick and just as she was thinking that Melissa must have made a mistake, they came to a clearing.
And Chase saw it: a small hunting cabin, made of wood, the lower half covered in overgrown vegetation.
Chase immediately cut the engine, opened her window and listened. She heard forest sounds, but that was all.
She looked at Melissa and was immediately conflicted. Chase didn’t want to handcuff her—if she didn’t come back, Melissa would be trapped. But she couldn’t afford for the girl to just walk free, either.
Chase checked her phone, even though she knew that there would be no signal.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
Melissa didn’t protest. In fact, she actually held one hand out to allow Chase easier access to her wrist. Chase loosely cuffed the woman to the door handle.
“I’ll be back,” she said, and then left the car, gun in hand.
But the closer she got to the cabin, the less sure of this face Chase became.
Chapter 59
“Tell me where Chase is!”
The girl Floyd gripped by the arms looked terrified.
“I—I don’t know. I don’t!”
Tate peeled the two of them apart.
“What you mean you don’t know?” Floyd asked. He noticed that both Dr. Heinlin and the cop had joined him in the small room, which had started to feel claustrophobic. He stepped back and let Tate take over from there.
“I—I—I just—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where Agent Adams went?” Tate clarified, his voice surprisingly calm. “You know who we’re talking about?”
The terrified girl nodded.
“Chase... you’re talking about Chase. But I don’t know where she went. I’ve been here,” she indicated the room, “the whole time.”
“What about before?” Floyd asked, his anger returning “Before you attacked her?”
“I just—I don’t remember. Somewhere dark and…”
“And what?”
“That’s it.”
Floyd wasn’t sure what incensed him more, the lack of information or the woman’s convalescent shrug.
“She’s still recovering,” Dr. Heinlin offered. “Her memory is imperfect.”
“Imperfect?” Floyd gawked. “I don’t—”
Tate expertly maneuvered from his position between Floyd and Bridget and Floyd and Dr. Heinlin.
“It’s best if we don’t agitate her,” the doctor advised.
This was the wrong thing to say—Floyd’s main concern was his partner, not her attempted murderer.
“Where is Chase?” he asked the room.
Dr. Heinlin became defensive.
“She never told me anything. Just that she wanted to use the room.”
Floyd’s arms shot in the air. He felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Whenever Chase went MIA, bad things happened.
Mostly to her.
“Where the fuck is Chase?”
“Floyd, take a walk,” Tate said.
“What?”
“Go, get out!”
Tate’s lips were so tight that they were hidden behind his mustache.
“Fuck!” One final glare at every person in the room and Floyd finally listened to his partner. In the hall, he tried Chase again, but to no avail. Next, he called Summers back.
“Floyd? Did you get the address?”
“Yeah, I need you to give me a location on Chase’s phone.” When there was no answer, he said, “Summers? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just not sure what you’re asking me.”
To Floyd, he’d been painfully clear: the location of all active FBI agents could be traced through their cell phones, and he needed to know where Chase was.
“Agent Adams… I need you to track her cell.”
“I—I don’t have her here,” Summers replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Agent Adams is not on my active list. I can’t track her.”
Floyd felt his vision start to tunnel.
“She’s not?”
“Nope, not active. Floyd, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he said meekly.
“You want—”
“No, I—I have to go.”
Floyd hung up but before he could wrap his head around Agent Summers’ words, Tate came out of the room.
“Dr. Heinlin reached out to security,” Tate said, his face still stern. “They have a video of Chase leaving the hospital with a woman.”
“A woman? Who?”
Tate shook his head.
“Don’t know.”
Floyd looked skyward.
“What the fuck is this fucking case? Nobody knows anything!”
“Calm down.”
Floyd glared at Tate.
“Calm down? What are you talking about? Chase has been kidnapped and you’re telling me to calm down?”
“Floyd, calm the fuck down! Chase wasn’t kidnapped. Get a grip.”
Floyd licked his lips and stared.
“How do you know?”
“Because it wasn’t the woman leading Chase out of the building, it was the other way around.”
Floyd couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Chase commandeered Bridget’s room after her lawyer visited and then when someone else comes, she kidnaps her and vanishes?
Something wasn’t sitting right. It wasn’t that Floyd didn’t think Chase capable of such an act—he’d seen her do worse—but the real question was why. What connection did this woman have with Henry or the other girls, for that matter?
“Was the person with Chase—”
“No, she was normal. Woman in a gray suit,” Tate said, predicting what Floyd was about to say.
“And was the cop around when the lawyer came?” Floyd asked, still trying to understand what was going on. “Was he outside the door when she visited? I want to know if the lawyer was the same person that Chase left with.” Floyd paused. “And when—I want to know when they left.”
“I’ll ask.”
Tate nodded and disappeared into the room, leaving Floyd to stew.
Chase is untraceable. Chase paid cash for her hotel room and hospital visit. Chase got me to call Summers and didn’t do it herself.
Floyd shook his head.
What the hell is going on here?
Tate reemerged from the room.
“Can’t know for certain, but the description of the two women is the same.” As he said this, Tate reached up to run a hand through his hair. “And that was over an hour ago.”
He had a dark stain around the armpit of his white shirt.
White shirt… Floyd thought… white dress.
He snapped his fingers.
“Let’s go,” he said, already moving in the direction of the elevator.
“Where?”
Realizing that Tate wasn’t following him, Floyd looked over his shoulder at his partner.
“Floyd, where are we going?”
“After Chase,” Floyd said. When this was insufficient to get Tate moving, he added, “Roger Evans’ hunting cabin, that’s where. And hurry the fuck up because we have to make up time.”
Chapter 60
Once again, it was the smell that clued Chase into the fact that she was in the right place. And then she scolded herself for not being better prepared. When she made it to within twenty feet of the wooden hunting cabin, the reek of putrescence was so awful that it seemed to push against her like a physical barrier.
Gagging, Chase pulled Audrey’s sweatshirt over her mouth and nose and relished the sweet smell of her sweat from having gone unwashed for the past two days. The small porch with rotting wooden handrails didn’t appear to have an opening or stairs, suggesting that Melissa had led her to the rear of the cabin. Chase winced as she stepped up onto one of the overhanging boards and then lifted her leg high over a section of railing that had nearly completely collapsed.
She felt something stretch and pull in her neck but didn’t dare look to see if her bandage was weeping blood. Tearing her new stitches now was of no consequence.
Her initial steps toward the cabin’s rear door were soft and cautious. But when Chase discovered how soft and rotted most of the wood was, her approach changed from creating as little noise as possible to not wanting to fall through and twist an ankle.
The door was in a state of disrepair that rivaled the deck. It was crooked in the frame and one of its two hinges was broken. Chase tried to peer through the many gaps in the wood, but someone had applied a thick curtain or similar fabric on the inside. Her first thought was that this was to prevent someone from seeing in, but glancing around, this seemed unlikely. Not only was the cabin secluded and the prospect of a random passerby extremely remote, but the door didn’t appear locked. Anyone could just grab the rusted handle and pull it open if they were so inclined.
This could only mean one thing. The drapes or whatever they were, weren’t intended to keep someone from looking in, but looking out.
Darkness.
No, not darkness. The notion of darkness suggests the presence of light.
There is no light.
There is nothing.
Chase sucked in a deep breath through her mouth and carefully opened the door. To her surprise, it didn’t creak but moved smoothly and silently. Worried about filling the interior of the musty space with light, Chase didn’t perform the standard corner checks—she just slipped in and closed the door behind her.
Then she stood completely still, trying to adjust to the darkness that enveloped her, tried to sense movement, differences in swashes of gray or black that might indicate someone’s presence.
A second passed, then five. Shortly thereafter, she realized that the ground was mostly dirt—moist dirt.
Chase was reminded of something Floyd had said, relaying information from the ME about how fingerprinting these girls was next to impossible due to their skin being so pruned and wet.
I’m in the right place. I have to be.
She spotted movement in the corner of the cabin. A flicker, a disturbance in depth.
Chase raised her gun.
“Put your hands up,” she ordered. Her voice cut through the din like a blacksmith quenching a new sword in water.
A humanoid shape stepped forward, and two hands shot up.
Chase immediately realized that she’d made a mistake. The arms were too thin, the hair too long and greasy.
It was a person, as she’d suspected, but it wasn’t the man in the mask.
There was a shuffling sound behind her, and Chase spun her heels on the soft ground.
It was Henry. At least, she was fairly certain that it was Henry. It was difficult to know for certain, what with his face covered with a gas mask and the rest of his body concealed by dark clothing. But Chase remembered that posture, the gait.
“Don’t you fucking move,” she ordered, stepping back so that she could make out the girl in the corner in the periphery while keeping her gun trained on the man. He was holding something in his right hand.
A hunting knife, one that looked very much like those they’d found at the scenes of the two murders.
And the one that nearly took her life.
“Drop it,” she said.
“It’s not what you think.”
The muffled voice did nothing to confirm or deny that this was Henry. The mask gave the man’s words a strange property that bothered Chase’s ears. Even though he was standing less than ten feet from her, with her eyes closed, she would have had a hard time locating the source, direction, or location of the voice.
The word comes from nowhere and everywhere and it fills every putrid pore and every fetid cavity.
Chase shook her head to clear herself of this bizarre, disconnected thought. If her stitches hadn’t torn before, they did not. She felt a warm liquid begin to seep from the wound.
“Drop the knife and take off the mask.” Chase cleared her throat and shrugged her left shoulder uncomfortably. “Do it.”
The man raised one hand and showed Chase his palm while he squatted a little to lower the knife to the dirt, his movements slow and deliberate. His now empty right hand went to the mask and as he began to peel it from his face, Chase detected movement.
It had come from the same corner as the one occupied by the girl, but it wasn’t her.
It was someone else.
Another girl who was already dead. Not much more than a corpse, she was the most decrepit yet. Skin impossibly wrinkled, every angle formed by every joint acute. Eyes so sunken that their existence was called into question. No lips, just a slit revealing more of that ubiquitous darkness within.
“Stay there!” Chase said, swallowing back bile. In addition to her sweatshirt, she used the crook of her elbow to cover her nose and mouth.
The corpse obeyed but her purpose had been fulfilled.
Chase had been distracted just long enough for the attack to come. But it didn’t originate from the man who had been wearing the mask, nor the two shells of human beings.
Instead, it came from the corner behind her, the only one that Chase couldn’t see.
Chapter 61
The feral blur flew at Chase’s face like an organic bullet. She noticed it just in time to move her head to avoid her eyes being gouged out by the cat, but in doing so, the protective sweatshirt slipped from her face. Claws raked Chase’s cheek, one of which caught near the corner of her mouth. She instinctively swatted the animal and then shrieked as the nail pulled free of her skin, taking with it a substantial chunk of flesh. The cat meowed as it struck and then rolled in the dirt, trailed by an almost cartoonish puff of wet smoke.
“Fuck!” she dabbed at her face, feeling sticky wetness.
More movement now, this time from the man.
“No!” he screamed, the pitch of his voice rivaling Chase’s of moments ago. “No!”
“Stop!” Chase aimed the gun, her finger moving from the guard to the trigger. “Don’t you fucking move!”
Henry, she saw now that it was indeed Henry, was in no state of mind to obey. The aghast man lunged, but not at her—for his cat. Chase sidestepped the man’s oblivious approach, and if there had been any stitches remaining in her neck, they were broken now.
“Don’t—” Chase grunted. She could feel blood trickling down her chest and soaking the fabric of her bra. “Don’t move.”
Henry dropped to the ground and wrapped his body protectively around the cat, which seemed no worse for wear.
“Fuck you,” Henry hissed. “You hit Anne.”
It took Chase a few seconds to realize that the cat’s name was Anne.
“Fuck me?” Blood trickled from her cheek into her mouth and Chase spat onto the ground. “You tried to kill me!”
There was blood in her throat now, but no amount of spitting would clear it—it wasn’t coming from her face but from the inside.
The man neither confirmed nor denied her accusation.
“You hurt Anne!”
“If you move again, you’ll be—” Chase grunted and felt her legs go weak. “You’ll be the one hurting.”
Henry bared his teeth and his eyes fell to Chase’s gun, which was now only at half-mast.
Chase should have predicted the man’s next words or some facsimile of them. After all, Henry Saburra, like Brian Jalston, was a coward. They could kidnap and brainwash little girls, but when confronted by an adult? A man or woman of equal or greater standing? They preferred others to do what needed to be done, to get their wrinkled and mottled flesh dirty.
“If she shoots me,” Henry began, in a voice several octaves lower than just moments ago. “I want one of you to slit your throat and I want the other to slit hers.”
A sinister smile appeared on Henry’s face.
Chase raised the gun and felt a rivulet of blood reach her belly button now. Her strength was waning, and she knew she didn’t have long.
“Why—why are you doing this? They don’t—they don’t deserve this…”
Chase could feel her grip on reality fading.
“They don’t deserve it? Becca didn’t deserve it either. We did everything for that girl! Brought her in, cleaned her up… gave her the family that Wayne and his bitch wife Julia never did.”
Chase squinted.
“What?”
She wasn’t following.
“Can you believe that? They gave up on her… a doctor! A fucking doctor gave up on his child because she was sick?”
A doctor… Dr. Griffith III?
“But we saved her,” Henry’s eyes were wild, his face manic. “We did! Me and Roger… we saved Becca. Yes, yes—yesssss.”
The man was no longer looking at Chase but off to his left. She followed his gaze to a makeshift mantle upon which was propped a familiar photograph: Roger, Henry, and the girl. The former two were genuinely smiling, the latter was putting on a show.
Could it be that the girl in the photo was Dr. Wayne Griffith III’s daughter? Was that possible?
There was no mention of Wayne having a child in the case file, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
