by Angie Fox
“Or ghost footage,” I added.
“But nobody will want to return to the crime scene except our killer.”
“Because he was interrupted by Verity,” Frankie said with relish. Then the excitement drained from him as he realized what that meant. “Oh, hell.”
“We’ll stake out the murder scene and see who comes down to the basement,” Ellis said as if this were the greatest idea ever.
“I even left my cell phone recording at the scene,” I told him.
“I love you.” He grinned, giving me a quick kiss.
“I can’t believe this is how I’m spending my afterlife,” Frankie said.
“You have anything better to do?” I asked the gangster.
He scratched his head, knocking his hat sideways. “Not until there’s a way to get Scalieri out of this place.”
“Then come on,” I told him. “It’ll be an adventure.”
11
Ellis insisted on leading the way down the winding staircase to the basement. I’d hoped we’d never have to enter this dank tunnel again.
Still, his plan was perfect. “All we have to do is hide in the morgue and wait for the killer.”
“Way to sell it,” Frankie said, with all the enthusiasm of a dead bug.
“Hang back and let me handle it if things get dicey,” Ellis cautioned. “I’m a trained officer.”
The trouble was, he could barely walk.
The banister felt cold under my hand, and I could practically smell the rot and fear lingering under the odor of wet brick and mildew.
I hesitated, wincing at the clack of Ellis’s crutch against each step. Despite his brave face, he wasn’t doing well. He needed medical help soon.
Even more worrisome, we had to find our murderer fast, before he or she decided to eliminate the policeman bent on investigating—or even me, the hapless girl who’d found the body.
Rust crumbled under my fingers, and every step I took was a further descent into the void. A sticky spiderweb clung to my hand. My veins iced over, and I fought off a shriek.
Because tiny insects are the thing to fear down here.
“Keep it together,” Frankie hissed.
As if he had room to talk. I rubbed my hand hard on my jeans and wished I’d never set foot in this stairwell, this basement, or this asylum.
I had to be brave. Ellis had it worse. Pain etched his every movement as he lumbered down ahead of me. I hurried to catch up. “You hanging in there?” I asked, mainly to let him know I was there for him.
“The way I figure,” he said on a harsh exhale, unable to hide the effort it took him to simply put one foot in front of the other, “there’s no way an innocent person would go down into this basement.”
“Except us,” I offered. Yet he was right. I’d never be down here if he hadn’t suggested it. No matter. I kept on task and stuck close in case he stumbled. “An innocent party would be looking for a way out,” I reasoned, “not a maze of tunnels and a room with a fresh body.”
“So basically, I’m hanging out with the wrong people,” Frankie said, studiously avoiding a more obvious tangle of cobwebs clinging to the banister to our left.
The gangster could have just disappeared and reformed at the bottom of the steps, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to pursue the investigation. In fact, I’d be willing to bet he was only hanging out with us because he had nowhere else to go.
“The trap you set is brilliant, Verity.” Ellis reached the dirt floor and slowly turned back to me, leaning heavily on his crutch. “All we have to do is see who returns to the scene to try to cover their tracks.”
“Right,” I said, joining him, shivering at how close I’d come to encountering the killer. Still, I was glad I’d thought to leave my cell phone to record the scene after I locked the body in the boiler room.
Water dripped from the pipes overhead, making puddles in the mud. Yes, things were peachy.
“Let’s get to the morgue,” Ellis urged, “quick as we can.”
We needed to be hidden if and when the killer returned. I hoped Ellis was right about that, even as I hoped just as hard that we didn’t have to face Barbara’s murderer down here in the dark.
Every step was a task. I stuck close to Ellis as he navigated the uneven floors littered with patches of gravel. On the way, I also made sure to step in the mud, just to see if it looked like the same gray mud from Joan’s shoes.
We passed the wooden door marked Delivery, which hid the dumbwaiter. Beyond it, the morgue door yawned open several inches.
“Why is that door always cracked?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“Looks to me like the latch is broken,” Ellis said, examining it before pushing it open.
This time, he shined his light inside before he barged in. And as he did, a cold breeze trickled from the room.
It stole over my skin, raising goose bumps on my arms. “Do you feel that?”
“I do,” Ellis said, entering before me.
This was how he’d gotten so badly injured, by going where he might not be welcome. This time, I was going in too.
I forced myself past the threshold and aimed my light straight ahead. It landed on the body lockers, their metal doors clinging to rusted hinges. I shifted it to the steel autopsy table and to the discarded metal folding chair that had toppled Ellis the last time we were here.
“Looks good,” Ellis said, his light lingering on the rusted bolts securing the autopsy table to the linoleum floor. He hobbled deeper into the room, to the body drawers. He aimed his beam into the top left chamber then continued his probe across the upper row.
“Let me,” I urged, not at all eager to look at body drawers, but more than willing if it meant getting Ellis off his feet.
He nodded, trusting me.
I was glad for it.
“I can’t imagine how Brett and Cash thought it was a good idea to seal themselves up in here,” I said, easing open the far-left drawer in the middle row, cringing at the handwritten label on the outside of the body drawer that read Fitzgerald, Emmaline.
My blood froze when my light landed on what could very well be a brown skull jammed into the back.
It was old and rotting. What a terrible thing for a supposedly professional medical staff to leave behind.
“I don’t care what you do or don’t find in those drawers,” Frankie said from the doorway, rubbing his arms as if the room itself gave him chills. “We’re not alone down here.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, moving to the top row of drawers. We could always count on Frankie for nice thoughts.
Ellis hitched himself up on the autopsy table. As if that were the best place to take a seat. I supposed it did him good to get off that leg.
His crutch clattered as he tucked it next to him. “If Frankie wants to make himself useful, he could always go see what Tom and Joan are doing.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said, turning to the ghost, who appeared absolutely horrified. “You’re our perfect spy. Think about it. They’ll never know you’re there.” Heck, Tom didn’t even believe in him. “You can tell us where they go and if they’re headed our way.”
“Are you nuts?” Frankie gaped. “I saw where those two went. They went up to that floor with the torture chambers—”
“Medical exam rooms,” I corrected.
“The haunted teddy-bear-looking thing,” he continued. “Ahh.” He raised a hand before I could interrupt. “I saw you. That’s right. I watched you go down that second-floor hall before I got back to work. I don’t need that kind of messed-up stuff in my life.”
“As if that’s my fault,” I said.
“It is,” he declared in no uncertain terms. “If you’d followed me right then and there, maybe you could have kept the guards entertained while I sprung Scalieri free, and we could have sped out of here before this whole thing blew up in our faces.”
Except for one problem. “I told you that wasn’t the plan.”
Frankie sprea
d his arms to the sides. “That’s not the point!”
“So is Frankie going to track the Burowskis?” Ellis prodded.
“We’re still in negotiations,” I told him.
“Ha.” Frankie crossed his arms over his chest. “You and your negotiations. There was never a chance on this one. I’m not wandering around this place alone. I’m not even setting foot inside the morgue. You’re wasting your breath. You’re talking crazy. You’re—”
A keening wail echoed down the hallway outside.
I froze. Ellis flicked off his light. And Frankie zipped into the room so fast I thought for a second he’d continue straight out the back wall.
“What was that?” Frankie hissed, looking for somewhere to hide.
“How should I know?” I mouthed, extinguishing my light as well.
The gray light of my gangster ghost cast shadows over the body drawers.
I sure hoped they were empty. We still didn’t know what was in the bottom row.
As my eyes adjusted, the outline of Ellis came into focus, lit up by the gray glow of Frankie. My boyfriend reached out his crutch and ever so gently closed the door to the morgue.
With us inside.
Frankie’s mouth formed an O as he shrank into a glowing ball of energy and retreated to the upper right corner of the morgue. Somehow he still managed to glare at me.
“Frank,” I whispered, motioning for him to turn my power off. He was beyond listening.
The wail sounded again. This time closer.
Stars. That didn’t sound good. But there was nowhere to go. A ghost might haunt this basement, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t follow us upstairs.
Was there truly any place safe within the asylum?
Calm down.
Focus.
I crouched down, wishing I could roll into a ball, as if that would make me less visible.
The temperature dropped, and I let out an involuntary gasp, drowned out by the pounding of my heart in my ears. Maybe it wasn’t Crazy Charlie. There were lots of other ghosts here. Although the ones I’d met didn’t seem like the wailing types.
A slow, wet smacking noise sounded from the other side of the door.
Whatever it was, it was close.
The wail sounded again, this time farther down the hall, toward the spiral staircase. I allowed myself a tiny gasp of relief.
Maybe it hadn’t noticed us. Ghosts were people too. I mean, sort of. It wasn’t like they had any special people-detecting powers. We were hidden. We’d stayed quiet.
Moments later, the air warmed and I shot to my feet.
Yes. Yes!
I hurried over to Ellis in the dark, using the faint glow of Frankie to guide me. When I drew near enough, Ellis reached out to me and took my hand. His were ice cold. Mine, as well.
“I think we’re all right,” I whispered, so, so glad for it.
Frankie remained wedged in the corner. “I think I just had a coronary.”
I didn’t remind him that his heart hadn’t beaten in almost a hundred years.
Ellis squeezed my hand. “I felt the ghost pass by,” he said, clearing his throat. “It was cold and empty and dark.”
“Ghost hunting is usually a lot more pleasant,” I said, trying to smile.
“I don’t know.” He let out a huff. “I’m starting to think I’ve been encouraging you to go into some pretty scary situations,” he admitted.
That was true of his job, too.
“Here,” I said, “give me your cell phone.”
He shot me a questioning look but did as I asked. I typed in his passcode and opened the ghost EVP app that Brett had sent. “This sort of worked upstairs. It might keep you in the loop.”
Stranger things had happened. Besides, we were stuck here while we waited for our killers to return to the murder scene next door.
The app gave off static, but it wasn’t loud enough to give us away to anybody alive, especially with the morgue door closed.
“Hold up,” Frankie said, coming down out of the corner. “That thing is an invasion of privacy. It’s bad enough Verity can hear me. I don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry eavesdropping on my business.”
“Hear,” a mechanical male voice sounded from the ghostbuster EVP.
“Hey, it worked,” I said. “Frankie was just complaining about you listening in on him.”
“Will you two stop horsing around?” Frankie asked.
“Prance,” the ghostbuster EVP detector chirped.
Ellis chuckled. “I don’t even want to know what Frankie’s doing now.”
“Frankie’s going to flatten you if you don’t think of a better way to get us out of here,” the gangster fumed.
“Look, I agree with you,” I said to the ghost. “Every minute we spend in this asylum lowers our chances of making it out. But the only way we’re leaving is if we solve Barbara’s murder first. So…”
Frankie gave me a death glare, refusing to take the hint.
So I stated it outright. “It would really help if you trailed our suspects.”
Frankie narrowed his eyes. “Fine,” he gritted out.
“Yippee,” the ghostbuster EVP detector chirped.
“I hate that thing,” Frankie said. “And right now, I’m not too fond of you either.”
“He’s going to do it,” I said to Ellis.
“I heard his yippee,” Ellis said, holding up his phone. “It’s nice to finally hear you talk, Frank.”
“As if I’d ever say yippee,” Frankie sneered.
“Yippee,” the device chirped.
“I never realized he was so motivated to help,” Ellis said, surprised.
The mobster rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky I’m the patient type.” I didn’t ask him since when. He pointed a finger at me. “It ain’t safe down here, and it ain’t safe upstairs, and it looks like I’m the only one who can break this case wide open.”
“Or at least spy on our suspects,” I supplied.
“That too,” he groused. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
Truth be told, it surprised me as well. This was one of the rare times Frankie had ever voluntarily helped me. I hadn’t bribed him or threatened him. Sure, the ghost in the hallway had scared him, but he’d been in haunted places before with me. “I think I’m seeing real growth here,” I told him.
“Don’t start,” he warned as he began to fade. “If I get caught by Nurse Claymore…” he warned.
“I believe in you,” I said.
“Okay, well, if I get strapped down to a table and tortured by some crazy ghost, I’m blaming you,” he said, by way of parting.
“I’ll feel guilty, I promise,” I assured him, watching him go.
Ellis touched my hand. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I wound my fingers through Ellis’s.
Bad things had happened here, and for all of Frankie’s blustering, he was smart to be cautious.
We would be too.
12
The morgue lay eerily quiet with Frankie gone. Ellis and I sat on the autopsy table in the dark, my thigh brushing his.
The hallway outside stood empty. Nothing stirred in the basement of the asylum.
It gave me a second to think, to recall the experiment I’d begun.
“There’s something I did on the way in here,” I said, flipping on my flashlight. The morgue door was closed, so a single beam of light shouldn’t tip anyone off to our location. Besides, it was aimed at my shoe. “I deliberately stepped in some puddles in the hall.”
Gray mud clung to the soles and squicked up the sides of my white Keds.
Ellis trained his own beam of light on the mess. It cleared off some shadows and gave us an even better view. “It looks like the same color of mud as on Joan’s shoes,” he said gravely.
“My thoughts exactly.” It differed from the brown mud we’d tracked in from outside. “I don’t know where else she’d get it. The second and third floors were dirty and cluttered, but dry.”
/> “No open windows with dirt and rain blowing in?” Ellis asked, thinking.
“No. In fact, it would be hard to create a mud puddle upstairs. The dirt on the floor wasn’t that thick. Besides, I was with Tom and Joan almost the entire time.”
Except for the time of the murder.
There was another thing. “Tom’s shoes looked clean as far as I could tell.” I wished I hadn’t been quite so eager to hit so many puddles. My shoes would never be the same. “Either he stepped more carefully than his wife did, or he was never down here.”
“She doesn’t seem the type to venture into the basement alone,” Ellis stated. “And even if she was, I’d peg him for a control freak and not the type to let his wife out of sight.”
“True,” I said, bracing an arm on the table. We both knew we needed more than that.
Ellis’s shoes were clean, at least on the outside edges I could see. As if reading my thoughts, he turned his booted foot sideways. Thick gray mud gripped the inside of the treads.
I considered it a moment. “So it is possible we didn’t see it on Tom.” Although merely having gray mud caked into his soles didn’t prove he was a murderer. “I suppose there could be other places with the same mud,” I said, echoing Ellis’s suspicion earlier. “But where?”
Ellis scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “This basement is…unique,” he said, putting it mildly.
I jumped down off the table. “So how did they get down here?” I asked, pacing. We’d taken the spiral stairs off the lobby. The rest of the place was a maze. It wouldn’t be easy to navigate. I paused. “If they had plans to buy the place, they might have the layout of the building and the property.”
Ellis ran a hand along his jaw. “True. But that doesn’t solve our timing issue. They had to get in and out quickly. And you left them all the way up on the third floor.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “They could have come down the body elevator.”
I stilled. “That’s terrible.”
“Think about it,” Ellis said, shifting on the table to keep an eye on me as I ventured to the wall directly behind where we’d been sitting. It connected to the Delivery area used to transport bodies to the morgue.