The Emperor

by N. M. Brown

  Showing a tentatively smile, she relaxed taking in each member of her Family. Mara had Sam across her lap, while Gala was slim again wearing a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up tucked into dark jeans. Bris sat besit him, with Nic on her otherside in baggy jeans, half-done up and sat up rolling a joint. All the while Archer stood at the front holding the meeting.

  Twilight, dressed in a beautiful velvet dress, was the only one who gave her a genuine smile. “Good morning darling. How are you?”

  “Cold.” Echo looked around the room looking for the problem she couldn’t quite pinpoint and step further into the library. “But had some business to attend to. Was a family gathering planned?”

  “Not really.” Archer answered sternly and without an explanation, turned away.

  Echo blinked. Never had she heard such a vague answer from Archer. “Not… really?” She repeated but everyone remained in awkward silence. “Should I have been-,”

  But Archer interrupted, as if he hadn’t even heard her start to speak. “We’ll be opening as normal tonight. I assume you’ll be on top form. Over the past weeks you’re been absence has been an inconvenient for us.” The Sin of Greed didn’t leave room for question and Echo found herself nodding before he’d even finished.

  “Of course, I’ll be here.” Echo promised.

  “Good. As for other matters; with the police raid many of our clients have gotten … ‘cold feet’.” He said, rolling the human phrase over his tongue like it tasted bad. “They, of course, have been reminded in suitable ways as to why they need not leave.”

  In short, Archer was draining their accounts, Nic was making sure a drug test was just around the corner at work, and Mara had manipulated the neighbours into second guessing that scandalous lawn feature. Typical manoeuvres for when a client decided they were no longer in need of Cardinal House.

  “Anything I can do?” Echo instantly asked. She couldn’t do anything now, per-say, but when the clients did come back, maybe then…

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Mara murmured casting Echo a sideward glanceas she trailed her nails down Sam’s face. Echo refused to blush in embarrassment at the blatant dig.

  It was Gala however, who spoke saving Echo from having to respond to Mara’s accusation. “No, you won’t be needed. You will be as normal, attending to the guests who have remained. They should be rewarded for their loyalty, see to it that they are.” He ordered.

  “I can do that.” She promised again and Gala nodded once before looking away. Every other set of eyes followed, and like that, Echo was dismissed, yet before she could leave the archway completely, Twi called her back.

  “The girl who’s staying with you, she important?” He asked, running his fingers through his hair.

  “She’s a means to an end.” Echo replied thinking they needn’t know the finer details of her plan. It could be a surprise for them; a Christmas gift maybe, that would be a first.

  “Oh… well she’s interesting. Full of envy and vanity. She’s holding onto a secret. If you want to play, I suggest looking into that.” Twi smiled with a wink. A secret, Echo thought with a grin, already starting to plot. She’d enjoy dragging that from Anna.

  Backing away slowly, Echo left the room and approached the stairs, mind spinning with thoughts, but that cane to a screeching halt as she heard the soft murmur of a voice.

  “That should keep her busy.”

  She slowed on the stairs, not quite coming to a stop as the words ticked over in her head. ‘Busy’? Busy plotting and scheming instead of… what? Did they want her out of the way? She was never involved in larger matters, but Echo thought now things could be different.

  “We shall see.” A deeper voice replied, before the conversation became too low and too quiet for her to hear.

  Suddenly, she was on a knifes edge over a very steep slope that if she found herself to fall, she would fly off into infinity; lost… alone…

  Echo shook the feeling off hard, stiffening her upper lip. There was always a plan, a game her family played. She would be informed when needed, she knew that; it had always been that way.

  Always…

  ◆◆◆

  Leaving the ground floor up to her apartment, Echo focused on Anna McQueen. She’d already knew some of it, first: the good, holy McQueen had left his wife for Rippling; something he wouldn’t have done lightly. If Echo had to guess, it had been out of shame and something normal people would divorce over. But, being Catholic, Queenie couldn’t, so he ran.

  The mere idea sent her pulse racing as possibilities popped up left, right and centre. The fact he hadn’t explained the situation to Pari Badal as they were strung up in the basement sent up warning flares too. Who didn’t spill their darkest secrets to save themselves from a serial killer? Big, fat liars, that’s who. It was time to get some much-needed answers.

  But how to go about it? Echo didn’t kid herself thinking she could fool Anna; she didn’t have time to become BFF’s and the woman was ditzy in love, not deluded.

  No, she’d have to be craftier; get the girls inhibitions down, lower her guard and Echo had a good idea of how to go about it. She’d had practise after all. She’d been taught from a very young age that the best way to win at cards, was to hold all of them.

  ◆◆◆

  Echo entered her apartment to find Anna actually awake, applying her make-up at the vanity mirror, humming an awful ballad with threads of words thrown in. It sounded to Echo like a badly played fiddle going through a cheese grater. Wilson however, thought differently. He was perched on her rumpled, unmade bed watching Anna with his black tail swinging merrily side to side in time.

  “Deaf, dumb and stupid.” Echo muttered to herself, scorning the cat in disgust

  “Oh. Morning.” Anna chirped, turning to give her a hot pink smile. “You’re back early. I was going to make you some breakfast, you know, as a thank you for taking me in, but you beat me out the door. I didn’t know you were an early riser.”

  Echo didn’t dare look out the window to see if any pigs were flying. “There’s no need.” She ground out. “I don’t eat here anyway. There’s rarely any food in the house.” She admitted.

  “Oh, then we must go out for breakfast.” Anna clapped happily. “What about that Diner again, they looked to have good food.”

  Not to mention it would be close to the Station and therefore close to McQueen. Of course, Echo knew he was out on a case, so it woudl be a fruitless endeavour. “The food there is terrible. You should go somewhere else.” Echo said, moving towards her clothes, as if deciding to change.

  “You-… You don’t want to come too?” Anna sounded surprised, like why wouldn’t anyone want to spend time with her?

  “No.” Echo answered, and then remembered blunt, curt answers weren’t deemed ‘friendly.’ “Sorry, I already ate while I was out, so I’m stuffed. But you go. Explore, find your feet. We’ll catch up later.” Echo even remembered to smile at the end.

  “Alright,” Anna answered hesitantly as if she expected a different answer. “If you change your mind…” But Echo didn’t respond, instead busying herself with chorse. She shuddered at the word.

  For the next hour, Anna potted around the apartment talking to herself about air headed things. Top of the agender at the time: what shoes would be acceptable to wear around Rippling? It seemed neither trainers or flats had made it into her suitcase, and no one mentioned to her half the town was cobbled street. It wasn’t until the front door clicked closed and the room feel into peaceful silence, did Echo move.

  Darting over, she whipped Anna’s suitcases onto the bed, flicking open the latches and top, revealing an kaleidoscope of colours. Bright flowers assaulted her eyes, matching scarfs fluttering in the wind of movement and there was a matching pair of shoes for every outfit. It looked like a nineteen-fifties housewife had died, leaving all her worldly possessions to Anna.

  Lightly lifting the clothes, Echo rummaged, making sure not to disturb anything too much.
She didn’t think Anna would notice if her clothes were rearranged, but it wasn’t something worth taking the risk on. Digging deeper, Echo pushed aside shoes and stockings alike until she hit pay dirt.

  A stack of pictures, each one with Anna in it smiling, laughing, flirting. Flicking through, Echo wasn’t surprised to find some had McQueen in, but what shocked her was that he was smiling too. It was an expression she hadn’t seen before: happy. She’d seen him half smile here, a toothless twitch there and she’d heard him laugh at least once… or she thought she had. The harder she thought back, the more she wasn’t sure.

  What she was sure about though, was that she’d never seen him smile like this. It was a smile that crinkled his nose and hid his eyes. It reached his laugher lines around his temples and showed off all his teeth. Most importantly, it was unmistakable that he was smiling at her. Anna, which Echo couldn’t understand, not after the way he’d acted around her yesterday.

  Flicking through the stack again, Echo focused on the other faces in the pictures. Some of them must have been friends, and some could claim family resemblance, but none really gave her the information she wanted. There was one image though, that did catch her eye.

  It was smaller than the others, half the standard size and it was a selfie of McQueen and Anna. McQueen was kissing her cheek, holding the camera aloft and there was a glow about him that said once again he was happy. It was Anna however that caught her attention. Her skin was paler - if that was even possible - and her smile was tight, not reaching her eyes. Her happy-go-lucky look was gone: her floaty scarfs in her hair were replaced with a wild, un-tamed mess and the black rings under her eyes were obvious. She wasn’t quiet the beauty she was now.

  The strangest part however, was the jagged uneven tear cutting across the couple’s chests, an odd direction to rip. Most bereaved couples split their faces in two; separating them in the image as they were in real life. So, unless Anna had had an argument with her legs…?

  Odd, Echo thought, but a card to add to her hand nonetheless as she slid the picture’s back and carefully replaced all the clothes. Searching for a few more minutes, she found nothing but make-up, toiletries and more clothes. She'd at least expected a book or magazine, but not even those had been tucked away.

  Putting the suitcases back on the floor, Echo reluctantly moved to sit in one of her high-backed chairs, looking out across the grounds. In the low winter sun, the grey skies blocked out most of the light and Echo saw the view in black and white. Dark trees, murky grass, the stone-grey brick of her balcony; she wondered if people who saw the world in black and white found it any easier, or did they miss the grey patches. Slumping further down, her fingers curled on the chair and she was forced to remind herself she knew a very large number of people who only saw in black and white.

  Tension rose in her shoulders and her breath came out shallow and soft. She could feel her jaw straining under the pressure she gritted her teeth, all the while her empty stomach churned. Fear rippled across her skin as she remembered McQueen’s map; visualised the dots and teh great green expance...

  Warping Woods.

  Echo wasn’t surprised it was McQueen of all people to stumble across that place. Every other Detective worth his chicken-liver would have left those case’s alone weeks ago. Not McQueen. He had to push, had to delve deeper and now he was neck deep in thick, dirty mud that would drown him and he didn’t even know it.

  It was a place Echo longed to forget. A place she had sworn she'd never go again. Cold and damp, dirty walls and dirty floors, rats around every corner, death at every crossroads, it was a maze of lies, secrets and betrayal. She and Adin had lasted a few months, finding it a paradise at first… but every paradise crumbled. It had taken the two of them years to recover once they’d escaped.

  Sat alone in her apartment in semi-darkness, Echo’s stomached cramped as her mind flickered over the aftermath, reluctantly breaking out in a cold sweat. The pearly grey sky threatened rain as the gloom rolled in and Echo sank further into her seat.

  "Fuck you McQueen! " Echo snarled to the empty apartment, slamming her fist into the soft chair arm, her body covered in a cold swaet. "Fuck you" she repeated even softer.

  She didn't move for the rest of the evening, lost in her memories trying to bury them deeper, and deeper only to find herself trapped within them. If Adin was there, he could have snapped her out of it told her to stop being such a pussy. But he couldn't. She'd killed him. He was dead and she was alone and 'that place' wouldn't let her rest.

  Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  VI

  McQueen was troubled. Each time he arrived at a crime scene, it was with a sense of anticipation: who was it, why were they dead, what questions would plague their death, unanswered. But for every new scene, McQueen felt more detached and unsurprised by the profanity of humanity.

  It scared him. He didn’t want to become numb to it all; he wanted to care. So, this time as he approached, he made sure to take everything in, every detail so’s to fully immerse himself in the victim’s pain.

  Todaythey were lost in a sea of trees hidden amongst fallen leaves and damp twigs; discarded, unloved and left to rot with mother nature. A strong wind raced around his body, whipping up leaves and coat tails alike, while an orchestra of groans and creekssounded from the branches above.

  Coming to a halt around men and woman in their paper suits, McQueen looked down at their victim; a girl, no older than her late teens, her skin mattered with dirt and her nails black and cracked. Her hand was all McQueen could see, the rest of her body covered by a sheet, but he’d heard the rest and what had been done to her… It was mid-afternoon by the time he’d arrived, and Hale had already taken most of the witness statements but he'd left the examination of the body for them both.

  “Cassi?” Hale asked as he and McQueen stood and waited.

  “Evening boys.” Doctor Cassidy, known as Cassi, was crouched by the body in her white, plastic onesie. Torch on her head and instruments in hand, she’d been directing Roman as to what she wanted photographed. Waving him away, she took pause, coming to stand with the two Detectives. "There’s no I.D. on the body, but form the condition of her ripped clothes, I wouldn’t have expected any. Bad nutrition, rotting teeth, pale skin and cracked nails, she has all the signs of lived on the street.” McQueen waited, holding his breath. "However, she didn’t die because of them.”

  “Which is why we were called in.” Hale spoke. That was a problem working homicide nowadays, you knew if you were called to a scene it was because of a grizzly murder.

  With a sad nod, Cassi described what they all knew already, but procedure was procedure. “She’s been savagely beaten, almost beyond recognition across her whole body, as well as signs of sexual assault. I’ll do a rape-kit back at the lab; hopefully, the stupid bastard left something behind.” Cassi breathed through her anger before continuing. “Some of her fingers are broken, as is one arm but there are no other signs of self-defence. I don’t know why, but she didn’t put up much of a fight. I will have to confirm cause of death with an autopsy but as of now, she was beaten to dead; internal bleeding the probable cause.”

  McQueen jotted down notes. “What about age? Can you determine how long she’s been on the streets?” If they could work backward, they could see when the teenager went missing.

  “I’d say a long time Detective. Every sign is there except intravenous drug use. However, drugs come in many forms so I’ll do extensive blood tests. As for age, I’d estimate she’s around sixteen years.” McQueen nodded.

  “Anything else?” Hale asked.

  Cassi hesitated, before nodding. “Again, I’ll have to confirm because the body is so badly beaten, and it could be swelling…” McQueen waited as Cassi took a breath. “I think the girl was pregnant. The bump looks to be around seventeen weeks, possibly with no prenatal care and looks to be into her second trimester. There are bruises all over her stomach. Coincidental or deliberate... its hard to tell.”

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