by Skylar Finn
“I found gloves in the kitchen.”
“Oh, God. I have to touch it.”
“Forget it,” Daniel said, waving me off. “I’ll do it myself. If you hear me scream, don’t worry about it. It just means I’ve popped a disc.”
“Stop being a drama queen,” I said. “I’ll do it. I have to run up to my room and get my camera. As soon as I find my room key.” I patted myself down, but the keycard wasn’t in any of my pockets. “Jazmin?”
Her relief was evident as she glanced up from Oliver’s sodden face. “Yes?”
“Do you have the room key? I need to get one of my cameras.”
She tugged a hefty black backpack—my camera bag—from a seat at the nearest table. “I have your cameras right here. Which one do you need?”
“Why do you—? Never mind. The DSLR. Daniel needs me to take a few pictures for him.”
As she attached the lens to the camera body and handed it over, she muttered, “Pictures of the body?”
“You betcha,” I whispered back.
“Can you not?” Daniel interrupted. “This is police business.”
“I’m the police,” I joked to Jazmin.
She saluted me. “Officer Star.”
“This isn’t for laughs,” Daniel scolded. “Are the two of you finished?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I took a fresh memory card from Jazmin and thanked her before she went back to Riley and Oliver. “Daniel, you have to joke about these things. Otherwise, they take over your head and you’re left drowning in regret and bad thoughts, and believe me, you don’t want to be in the deep end of that pool.”
“Believe me,” he said. “I know all about that pool. Are you ready?”
“As I can be.”
“Let’s go then.”
The jokes and taunts ended as soon as we left the Eagle’s View. When we returned to the hallway that led to Tyler’s room, I smelled death, that terrible mixture of must and formaldehyde. I almost pulled the collar of my sweater over my nose, but Daniel had thought ahead. He paused outside the room to hand out gloves and a medical mask.
“Where did you find these?” I said, pulling on the mask as he set a matching one over his own nose and mouth.
“The first aid office.” He produced a number of plastic trash bags. “Tie these on your feet too.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m trying to keep the evidence free of contamination,” he explained. “It’s going to be me and only me working on this case, and I don’t have the gear that the forensics team usually has access to. It’s a Sherlock Holmes thing all the way, so I can’t take any chances. What’s the matter? Scared you’ll look ridiculous?”
“Please,” I scoffed, tugging the bags around either boot and tying them tight. “I’m an online psychic. I look ridiculous for a living.”
“Super,” Daniel said. “Listen, it’s very important that you don’t touch anything when we go inside. Take as many pictures as you can from every angle, but be careful of where you walk.”
“Don’t step in the puddles of blood. Got it.”
“I need you to take this seriously.”
“You’re asking a YouTube creator to take up a job as a forensics photographer,” I reminded him. “It’s like telling a dog to write a novel.”
Daniel paused with his hand on the door. “You have once last chance to back out of this. I can take the pictures myself.”
“Like I’m letting you touch my camera.”
“Then let’s go.”
No matter how much I readied myself for what lay behind the door, the sight of Tyler’s dead body was no less jarring than it was the first time I’d seen it. His arms were flung out to either side. One of his legs had crumpled in an unnatural position beneath his torso. His white undershirt was slashed and stained from his wounds. The blood had started to congeal. It darkened as it gelled and hardened, and the metallic tang of it not only smelled, but tasted like death. Tyler’s eyes were open. A few days ago, I thought girls his age must think those eyes—another blue set like Riley’s—were handsome and alluring, as long as those girls didn’t get close enough to learn of Tyler’s awful personality. Still, seeing him like that caused a pang of sadness to hammer against my heart. None of this was his fault. His terrible behavior was a product of a loveless childhood and years of neglect. If someone had paid the least bit of attention to Tyler, maybe he’d be a decent human being rather than a sad corpse on the floor.
“What are you waiting for?” Daniel said. “Take the pictures.”
I raised the camera and clicked away. It was worse to examine Tyler’s murder through the lens zoom. The details were too vivid. I was now aware the murderer had stabbed Tyler twelve times through the abdomen with a thin blade. Parts of his organs oozed out of the gashes. I was grateful I’d never paid much attention in human anatomy class because I couldn’t tell which ones they were. I followed Daniel’s directions. He told me what to shoot, where to step, and how to move throughout the room without compromising the body.
“You’re going to wrap the body and clean the mess, right?” I asked Daniel as I clicked another picture of Tyler’s bedside table. A baggie with a single white pill rested there, waiting to be swallowed or sold. It didn’t surprise me that Tyler was into harder substances. “Won’t that compromise the evidence?”
“I told you I’m improvising,” Daniel said. “I’m not twiddling my thumbs over here, Miss Star. I’m taking notes.”
Sure enough, he had a tiny notebook full of cramped handwriting.
“Anything good?” I asked.
“I prefer not to share my homicide details with anyone but my superiors.”
“You asked me to do this,” I reminded him. “You wouldn’t have if you didn’t trust me to see this stuff. Does that mean you’ve ruled me out as the killer?”
Daniel knelt to examine a footprint in the blood. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I can’t rule anyone out. However, I’ve got a pretty good hunch that you aren’t the killer.”
“How do you figure?”
“It’s pretty clear someone’s got it out for the Watson family,” he said. “First, Thelma’s chair is sabotaged on the ski lift, then her son gets stabbed to death in his own hotel room? It’s not a coincidence.”
“Who would want the Watsons dead?”
“That’s what I would like to find out.” He tapped the plastic baggie on the nightstand. “Vicodin. Looks like someone made a call to Tyler last night. I wonder who.”
“Shouldn’t his phone be around somewhere? Check the call log.”
“I haven’t seen it,” Daniel said. “More intrigue.”
The camera beeped.
“Out of memory,” I said, checking the card. “You can’t possibly want more photos, can you?”
“No, I think we’ve got enough,” he replied. “Thanks again for doing this.”
I slipped the camera strap off my neck and set the device in the hallway, safe from harm. “That was the easy part. Do you have a plan for moving it—him?”
“Not a great one.”
All Daniel had was industrial-sized trash bags from the Eagle’s View kitchen and a roll of duct tape, but it was going to have to do. We laid the trash bags flat on the floor, end to end, next to Tyler’s body and got to work. The worst part was picking him up. Daniel took the head end so I didn’t have to stare into Tyler’s eyes as we toted his body across the floor. His bare feet were stiff and cold through my gloves. I almost retched into my mask as I grasped his ankles.
“One, two, three,” Daniel said.
We lifted at the same time and, with matching grunts, hauled Tyler onto the plastic bags.
“He’s heavier than I thought he’d be,” I said.
“It’s because all the blood has settled.”
When we put him down for his blood to continue settling, I ran out of the room, yanked off my mask, and heaved in the hallway. Nothing came up. I’d skipped breakfast. Daniel patted
my back.
“Please tell me you took off your gloves before you touched me,” I begged, afraid to look.
“Ah, shit. I knew I forgot something.”
“You—!” I whirled around to see Daniel grin and hold his hands up. Glove free. I smacked his chest. “I hate you.”
“You were the one who said we had to have a sense of humor about this stuff,” he reminded me. “Are you changing your mind?”
“I’m going to throw up all over you, and I’m not going to feel sorry about it.”
“Relax,” he said. “I can wrap Tyler on my own, but I need you to help me carry him to the kitchen.”
“The kitchen? Where the cooks make our food?”
“Yeah. The storage freezer should be big enough to keep him cold.”
“The storage freezer. Where we store our food?”
“We won’t eat anything out of there,” he said. “Leaving the body here would be a lot messier. I don’t want to get into the specifics of decomposition, but—”
My stomach threatened to surge again. “Stop talking. Why don’t we leave Tyler outside? It’s cold enough out there.”
Daniel clicked his tongue. “Don’t think I didn’t consider it, but we have to have some respect for this kid.”
“Are you going to tell Oliver what we’re doing with him?”
“No,” he replied. “Not yet anyway. Oliver’s too fragile to deal with this. He needs to process Tyler’s death. When this is over and the force shows up, we can handle Tyler’s body. Wait here, okay? I’m going to tape him up.”
As Daniel wrapped the body, I reviewed the pictures from the crime scene. Instead of clarifying what happened, the details blended together and confused me more. The slash wounds in Tyler’s stomach were reminiscent of a scene from the Scream movies, but who would carry a dagger at a ski resort? I squinted at a wide shot of the room. A blurry beam of white light hovered in the upper corner of the photo, but it wasn’t there when I took the picture.
“Ready?” Daniel said, popping his head out of the room. “I’ve got him all packed up.”
“Just the words every girl wants to hear.” I put the camera around my neck and under my sweater for safekeeping, not wanting to leave it in the room while we hauled Tyler’s body through the hotel. “Let’s get this over with.”
Though Tyler had been reduced to a misshapen body bag secured with silver duct tape, the absence of his corpse didn’t make the room any less horrifying. The blood on the floor and splattered across the bed linens was evidence enough of what had happened there. Once more, Daniel and I took either side of Tyler’s body and lifted.
“Are you okay?” he asked as we shuffled out of the room.
“As much as I can be. What about you?”
It felt better to talk. That way, I could focus on the conversation rather than the body between us.
“Not so hot, actually,” Daniel admitted. “I feel like this is my fault.”
The plastic slipped in my hands. I changed my grip. “What do you mean? Why would it be your fault?”
“I fell asleep after I locked Tyler in his room last night,” he said, walking backward so I wouldn’t have to. “I meant to stay awake, mostly to make sure he wouldn’t come out, but I dozed off. I don’t remember anyone going into the room.”
“The rooms have back doors that open up to the mountain,” I said. “The killer probably came in through there.”
“The carpet was wet from snow earlier,” he said. “So you might be right. But if I’d been awake, I would’ve heard whatever was happening inside. I can’t believe I fell asleep. I’ve been dealing with so much lately.”
“Take it easy,” I said as we emerged from the hallway and into the lobby. It was empty. Everyone stayed in the Eagle’s View per Daniel’s instructions. “None of this is your fault. You can’t take the blame for a murderer.”
“You don’t get it. You don’t work in law enforcement.”
“No, but I get this.” I glanced up the stairs, where everyone else sat in the lounge waiting for us to return. “Have you got an alternate route in mind? Because I doubt it’s a good idea to waltz through the lounge with Tyler in tow.”
“Employee staircase. Opposite hallway.”
The other hallway led to the half of the hotel that wasn’t often occupied. Oliver’s suite was this way, along with the resort’s original lobby and rooms, hidden beyond a retired restaurant and a desolate ballroom. I shuddered to remember the time I spent in those rooms. First, Tyler’s mean prank, where he and his friends screamed and chased me through the old wing, pretending to be villainous spirits. Then, when I found Riley yelling at the top of her lungs in the middle of the ruined library, her eyes rolling back in her skull. She didn’t stop until I’d carried her out of the burnt sector, and when she did, she told me someone had set her on fire. Just like Odette.
We didn’t go as far as the old wing. The employee stairs were at the front of the hallway. Getting Tyler through the small doorway and up the narrow steps was a bit tricky, but we managed. In blatant honesty, it wasn’t much different from when me and Jazmin hauled a second-hand satin sofa up the stairs to my apartment. The kitchen level was one floor up, and the staircase opened into a hallway not privy to guests of the resort. We carried Tyler beneath the flickering fluorescents into the kitchen. The cook’s assistant, Matisse, had been hard at work that morning before Tyler’s body was discovered. Fresh loaves of French bread, English muffins, and bagels cooled on the counter top. I wondered what King and Queens did with the extra food considering there were less than twenty people staying at the resort at the present time. The scent of rising yeast made my stomach rumble, but the deed at hand ruined my appetite.
The storage freezers were at the far end of the kitchen, set away from the other appliances. There were two of them. Daniel set down his end of Tyler to check which one had more room. The first was full of frozen meats and other exposed foods. The second was home to boxes and crates of whatever else the hotel needed. We cleared a spot in the second freezer and heaved Tyler into place. He fell into the shadows as we closed the door on him. Unless you were stuck inside the freezer, you might never discover the body from the first glance. Daniel discarded his mask and gloves in a fresh trash bag and motioned for me to do the same. We washed our hands and arms vigorously.
“Thank you,” he said. “That would have been a lot harder on my own.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t ever mention it again.”
Daniel wiped his brow with a kitchen towel. The head cook, Xavier, would have yelled at him for such a blight. “Most people wouldn’t have had the stomach for that kind of thing. I owe you.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve moved a dead body.”
He froze, the towel halfway across his forehead. “Excuse me?”
I sucked on my teeth. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“But you did.”
“It’s not what it sounds like.”
“It isn’t?”
“No,” I said.
Daniel tossed the towel into a hamper of cloth napkins. “Does this have to do with the psychic business scam you’ve got going on?”
“It’s not a scam,” I said hotly. “Well, it was, but it’s not now. Forget I said anything. It was a long time ago, and I’m not obligated to tell you anything.”
“Keeping secrets from a detective investigating a murder is the worst thing you can do.”
“My secret doesn’t have anything to do with this investigation,” I countered. “All you need to know is I didn’t kill Tyler, so why don’t you worry about your own secrets, Detective Hawkins?”
I didn’t mean for the comment to sound so mean-spirited, but it got the job done. Daniel went quiet, pondering the implication of my statement. He gave me a curt nod.
“I’ll do that, Miss Star.”
2
When I returned to the Eagle’s View, Jazmin noticed my sullen face from across the room. She stood up, abandonin
g Oliver without preamble, and met me in the middle of the lounge.
“What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” I mumbled. “It’s fine. Daniel and I moved Tyler into the kitchen.”
“Fine?” Jazmin repeated, aghast. “You moved a body! A murdered body! The last time—”
“Keep your voice down,” I said. “I don’t want to tote that information all over the resort. Daniel’s in over his head already. I want to keep mine down as much as possible. What’s going on here? How are Riley and Oliver?”
She gestured over her shoulder at Oliver, who appeared not to have moved the entire time I was gone. He remained slumped over in his chair, head between his knees. Were it not for the slow rise and fall of his shoulders, I would have questioned whether or not he was breathing.
“Oliver’s practically catatonic,” Jazmin said. “He keeps saying this is his fault. Riley’s okay, which worries me more. She seems relieved.”
“Can you blame her?” I looked over Jazmin’s shoulder. Riley propped her feet on the table next to hers. She leaned back in her chair with her arms behind her neck like she was sunbathing outside. “Tyler terrified her for her entire life, and she’s free from that. Besides, she’s not afraid of death as the rest of us are. She’s been hearing ghosts all this time.”
“Does that mean you’re not afraid either?” Jazmin said. “Because I’m scared, Lucia. I don’t want to be here. I want you and me to go home as soon as possible.”
“So do I,” I said. “I’m terrified too. You should have seen Tyler’s body. Whoever killed him wasn’t holding back. It was gruesome, like they were wanted to make it as bad as possible. I don’t think he died quickly.”
“What did Daniel think?”
“He wasn’t in the mood to share,” I said. “He wants to keep everything as hushed as possible, but I have the pictures on my memory card. Let’s dump them on my computer before he confiscates them from me.”
We hurried to a booth in an empty corner of the lounge. Jazmin brought over my laptop and camera bag. As I put away the DSLR, I noticed my expensive video camera was not where I’d left it. Neither were my little portable digital cameras and GoPros.