Authors: Ginger Voight
Adele stared after Roman, both thoughtful and quiet.
Brian instantly recognized the look on her face. He flipped the camera off and followed her as she turned from City Hall and headed toward the van.
He almost heard the gears turn in her head as he packed away his equipment. She was formulating a
plan and woe to the person who stood in her way. For the past five years Brian understood one thing about Adele. When she was on the case there was nothing that would stop her, especially Roman Piccoli.
The Commissioner and the reporter had a tenuous relationship based on a simple understanding. They would enjoy a give and take, as long as they exhausted every other option beforehand. He
didn’t want to help her sensationalize the news and she didn’t want to do his dirty work solving any crimes. Yet more often than not they did exactly that, usually in unison. It was a dance, really. A tango. Sometimes Roman would lead and sometimes Adele would. But in the last few months, and since the recent rash of child murders, Roman wouldn’t even come out on the dance floor. The stakes had been decidedly raised.
Brian
knew that wouldn’t stop Adele. He just hoped he had enough money to bail her out again.
“
What’s next, Nancy Drew?”
She smirked at her friend. He knew her too well.
“Let’s just say I have a plan.”
“
Shall I be at the jail tonight or tomorrow morning?”
“
Tomorrow morning is good for me. I could use the rest.”
Brian
chuckled as he ambled up to a red light. Across the street at the Grand Royale Hotel protestors picketed loudly around the old, historic castle, drawing the attention of both Brian and Adele. The crowd chanted “Monster,” while carrying signs with drawings of dead animals.
He shook his head with wonder.
“All this over a few dead wolves.”
“
You’re missing the bigger picture, Brian. Those carcasses were mutilated. They were a statement. A warning.”
“
Don’t you have enough trophies on your wall?”
Adele stuck her tongue out at him
before glancing back at the hotel. Another monster in her town. Her work was never done.
Lieutenant Jim Nelson followed Roman into his office. With the Commissioner’s bad mood he certainly didn’t want to have to tell him what he had to tell him. Unfortunately, he had no choice.
“
Well?” Roman bit out as he plopped into his chair.
Jim just sighed as he tossed a folder onto
Roman’s desk. “The results are back. They’re clean.”
Roman blew up.
“What do you mean they’re clean? How the hell can they be clean?”
Jim shrugged. If he knew that,
they’d have a suspect, or at least a clue.
Roman hopped up and began to pace.
“Four kids. Four murders. No clues. No forensic evidence. How is that possible? They had bite marks, for Christ’s sake.”
“
We don’t know that,” Jim offered. Sure that’s what it looked like but heaven forbid what it suggested.
Roman grabbed a folder from his desk and spilled out photos, gruesome photos of murdered children.
“We don’t?”
Jim sighed.
“Tell me how we’re supposed to catch a killer when we have no evidence. Tell me how we’re supposed to stop this from happening again, Jim.” Roman looked as helpless as Jim had ever seen him.
“
We have some evidence,” Jim reminded him. “We know the killer does not act alone.”
Roman nodded as he leaned back in hi
s chair with a sigh.
“
And isn’t it funny that Adele Lumas knew to ask that question when that was the one piece of evidence we had yet to release to the press?”
Roman glared at the man who had issued the provocative question. He said nothing as he scooped up the folder and stalked from the room.
Just after eleven
o’clock that night, Adele slipped into the front door of the city morgue. She looked both ways before making sure her unusual hair was tucked up under a cap, and then slid the key into the pocket of the large, curve-concealing coveralls. Adele had learned early on in her career that it always paid to know a good locksmith with questionable ethics.
For Adele, the e
nds always justified the means.
She ducked her head as she passed other janitors on the lower floor,
before quickly making her way up the stairs to the main offices of the coroner.
After pushing the door shut behind
her, she pulled a tiny flashlight from one pocket and her camera phone from the other. Of all the cabinets that lined the opposite wall, Adele headed straight toward the one that was locked.
She pulled a pick from her cap and fiddled with the lock until a resounding click echoed through the eerily quiet room. The drawer slid open and Adele stuck the
small flashlight in her mouth as her gloved fingers fumbled through the files. There was a tremor in her hands as she stopped on the file that read, “Maldonado, Lily.”
She flipped the file open and began to take photos of the contents, not even stopping to read. She had no time to waste, and being in a place permeated in death was doing a serious number on her nerves. She could check the p
ages out on her computer later. At that moment she just wanted to get her sneaky task over and done with.
Page after page swished from one side to
the other. Then from out of nowhere a photo slipped from the stack and floated gracefully to the floor. Adele stooped immediately to retrieve it and then sucked in a breath as she turned the photo over. The flashlight slipped from between her lips and clattered to the floor. Out in the hall something thudded and thumped, which prompted Adele to throw the photo into the file and shove it back inside the cabinet.
She snatched the flashlight from the floor as she scooted from the room. Another janitor passed by, tipping his head toward her. She returned the nod and kept her face turned slightly away. That was when she noticed the door to the examination room.
In that room laid the body of a dead child she had inexplicably dreamed she killed. Beyond anything else Adele knew she didn’t want to go into that room or see that child.
But she
also knew she had no choice.
She
absently brushed away the indistinguishable voices that instantly buzzed in her ear like a swarm of gnats. It was a legion of familiar ghosts that always seemed to follow her wherever she went, so much so their intrusion was more bothersome than worrisome. Instead she turned her focus toward the end of the hall where the other janitor turned out of sight, giving Adele a golden opportunity to explore what lay beyond the door she was inching cautiously towards in spite of herself.
With a deep breath she pushed the door open. Even the air inside the room was as still and cold
as death, which was appropriate, but it wasn’t making her job any easier. Death and mortality were topics best shoved under a rug somewhere, a distant reality that wouldn’t come any sooner or any slower with any examination. Like many, Adele couldn’t stand cemeteries, she couldn’t deal with funerals; she just hated the finality of it all. It was a ticking clock that just got louder whenever she had to think about it – and thanks to this new case that was all she could think about.
No wonder she
couldn’t sleep.
She gulped hard as she shut the door behind her, eyeballing the endless vaults on the other end of the room. She squared her shoulders and headed toward the
two vaults that had name tags.
She stopped short when she read
“Maldonado” on the outside of one of the vaults. She fought back the images flashing through her mind – the forest floor, the dead dog, the frightened child. Surely she was just imagining things. Surely it hadn’t been more than just coincidence. Surely Dr. Ashcroft was right and she was just taking her work home with her.
Surely
, she reiterated to herself as she tried to gulp down her rising apprehension.
Her shaking hands clasped the handle of the drawer and it slid slowly out in front of her. The light from the other room glinted off of the metal slab. The covered body on
it seemed so small, too small.
Adele eased down the dark cloth, revealing
all that remained of Lily Maldonado. Her hair was dark and leaves and residual sprigs still poked from her scalp. Adele fought the urge to pick them out, and forced herself instead to look at the child’s face. Her shaking fingers angled her phone to capture a picture, cataloging yet another piece of the puzzle.
Lily’s
skin was so pale, almost incandescent. Adele instantly recognized the hue; she’d seen it in herself through her lifelong battle of anemia. Only this was worse. There were no fluids left in this girl. Adele’s brow knit as she tried to remember the file. Had she been embalmed? Was there an autopsy already?
Adele
stared so intently into Lily’s face that she couldn’t help herself but move closer to the drawer. Was this the face from her dreams? Had she even seen the face in her dreams? It was all so fuzzy now. She closed her eyes and tried to recapture the details of her nightmare. It had seemed so real just the night before. With time, as always, it had become a jumble of broken fragments, like the jagged edges of shattered mirrors. Only disjointed bits and pieces remained. With a frustrated sigh Adele opened her eyes to stare back into the face of the dead child.
Her phone clattered to the floor as she gasped out loud.
Lily’s eyes were open, and they now stared into hers. A scream lodged somewhere in Adele’s throat as the tiny bones in Lily’s neck cracked when she turned inexplicably toward Adele, revealing the gaping wound on the other side of her neck.
“
They’re coming for me,” croaked the tiny lifeless body, as if pleased or comforted by the idea.
Adele stumbled backward, moving right over the handle of the other vault causing it to pop open. Metal screeched against metal, sliding open the drawer with another covered body. Adele lost her footing and fell
face first toward the rigid, cold corpse. She could have sworn she heard the little girl laugh from the other drawer. With a strangled cry Adele scrambled toward the door without looking back.
She
didn’t stop running until she exploded through the front door of the building and hit the night air. Her hair spilled around her shoulders as she ripped off her cap and turned and stared back up at the building, specifically the darkened windows on the second floor.
She reached into her pocket for her phone, and then realized too late it was still on the floor up in the examination room. She cursed under her breath. As much as she wanted to run as far as she could get, she knew she
couldn’t leave the phone. Her shaking hands stuffed her hair back under her cap rather unsuccessfully before she headed back into the building.
She thought her heart would beat a hole in her chest as she rounded the corner to the examination room. Shadows danced in the darkness and played tricks on her eyes, which were already primed to see things she
couldn’t explain, like a talking dead child. With another cautious glance each way she hit the light, and sucked in a breath at what she saw.
The doors to both vaults were closed, and her
phone was nowhere to be found.
Had she
already been found out?
Or had the little girl snagged her phone before she slid back into the dark recesses of her vault?
Adele shook her head. That was crazy. And she knew crazy.
With an audible gulp, Adele reached for the handle. If she had remembered any prayers from her childhood, she might have thought to recite them. But her mind was churning with
one frightening scenario after the other as she pulled open the vault once more.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
The slab was empty.
She would have checked the vault again to see if
Lily’s name was still on the outside, but one piece of evidence lay upon the formless blanket to prove that she had the right chamber.
It was her phone, in exactly the s
ame spot the dead child once laid.
Her legs shook so badly she felt like they would buckle underneath her as she grabbed her phone. The minute she powered
it on, the photo came to rest on a very still, very dead little girl whose eyes were definitely closed.
Adele shook her head
again, trying to rid the images from her mind. Had someone been messing with her? Or had she hallucinated the whole thing? Both seemed as reasonable a theory as any to why Lily was now gone.
Dead children
don’t just get up and walk away, even if they do try to hold a conversation with the closest lunatic who happened to be standing nearby.
Adele punched the speed dial button on
the phone and held it to her ear, trying to ignore how badly her hand was shaking.