She smiles at me. A real smile, not a cruel one, not a cold one. It’s small, and sad, but for a moment her face looks alive, looks like the face of the girl I saw that night.
“Yeah, I was,” she says. “So you might as well answer me.”
I hesitate, because I don’t want that face to disappear.
“He hates it,” I say finally. “That he passed this . . . ability on to me. I don’t blame him, but he blames himself.”
Jane presses her lips together, the smile fading, and I feel the loss like an overcast day. “I understand,” she says. “But I meant what I said. I’m glad he gave it to you. Maybe that makes me selfish.”
“No,” I say, starting to walk again before someone sees me talking to myself. “It makes you human.”
My phone rings halfway down the block.
“Hey, Carl,” I say, answering.
“Lexi,” he says, his voice tired but amiable. “Long time, no see. How you been, kid?”
“Oh, you know,” I say. “Hanging in there. You?”
“Can’t complain. Job security, am I right?” He says that every time.
“Yeah.”
“So your grandpa says you need some information?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for a John Doe. Teenager, fifteen years old.” The police aren’t looking for Marcus, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been found. If the same person is responsible, maybe the bodies are close to one another.
“Hmm, I don’t think I have anything that matches that description.”
“What about stabbing victims?”
“Nothing recently. But I can check around.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Would I be able to come by later, ask you some questions?”
I hear papers rummaging. “Yeah, let’s see . . . three work for you?
“Sounds good. Thanks, Carl, I owe you.”
“No problem. See you soon.”
I hang up and find Jane watching me with one eyebrow raised.
“So?” she asks.
I shove my phone in my pocket. “Want to see some dead bodies?”
9
FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE LA COUNTY CORONER’S office is a tidy brick building with a cheerful courthouse façade. On the inside, they’ve given up trying to impress anyone living. Bloody hedge clippers rest to my left and buckets of cheap dish detergent are stacked to my right.
“Jesus,” Jane says, her eyes widening at the display. “Is this what they’re going to do to me?”
“Try not to think about it,” I whisper to Jane, most of my attention focused on trying to breathe through my mouth.
The smell doesn’t hit me all at once—first it’s licorice, and then something almost floral. But hiding underneath is the thick cloud of rot that even the cold temperature can’t cut. Take all the worst smells of the city—open sewer, hot garbage, burning hair—then multiply it by a thousand and add the putrid scent of decay.
That’s what this morgue smells like, like dead flowers and astringent. It’s suffocating. I cup my hand over my nose and wait for Carl to finish peeling off his latex gloves.
“Lexi! It’s been forever,” he says, far too cheerfully for the location. “You got taller!”
“Hey, Carl. Am I interrupting?”
“No, no, I’m just about finished. Let’s talk in the office.”
I nod and follow him through the morgue, my boots echoing on the cold floor and my breathing harsh through my mouth.
“Take a seat,” Carl says, collapsing into a chair held together with duct tape. The door snicks shut behind me, cutting off some of the smell at least, and I take a seat across the desk. Jane comes to stand next to me, leaning her back against the wall.
“So. How are you?” Carl asks, and I turn my focus to him. “You look tired.”
“Yeah, people keep telling me that.”
“Well, this isn’t going to help you sleep any better.” He nudges a folder on his desk. “All the stabbing victims from the last six months. We haven’t had too many this year; it’s mostly gunshot wounds and car accidents.”
“None of the missing people on the news have shown up?”
“Not yet,” Carl says.
I pick up the folder, absently flipping through the photos. Jane moves closer, leaning over my shoulder to look, and I hold my breath as her face comes close to mine.
“God,” she says, and blood blossoms on her neck.
Dead faces stare up at me, smooth and bloodless and gray, none of them familiar, none of them with their throat cut. I stop on an autopsy of an older man, examining the picture.
“‘Perforated liver,’” I read. “Did they catch the guy that did this?”
“Yeah,” Carl says. “Robbery gone bad, he didn’t mean to kill him.”
“‘Diaphragmatic injury, consistent with twelve-centimeter blade,’” I murmur, turning the information over in my head. I shut the folder and drop it back on the desk. Scientific method—to form a hypothesis, begin with the simplest questions.
I look up at Carl. “What size blade would you need to cut someone’s throat?”
“You don’t need length for that; the carotid is just below the surface. Something short but wide would be your best bet.”
I study Jane out of the corner of my eye; the wound on her neck is slighter deeper and wider at one end.
“Which side of the wound would be deeper?” I ask.
Carl frowns. “Typically the start, where the knife went in.”
“So if it’s deeper on the right, that suggests a left-handed assailant?”
“Most likely.”
“How much strength would you need for an attack like that?”
Carl raises an eyebrow at me.
“Hypothetically,” I say.
“Hypothetically,” Carl repeats, “not much, especially if it’s from behind. But if you’re talking female murder victim, the odds skew male.”
I exchange a brief glance with Jane, who lifts a hand to finger the cut.
“Thanks, Carl,” I say, standing up. “Keep an eye out for my John Doe. And let me know if any more stabbing victims pop up, will you?”
“Sure thing,” he says. “Do I want to know why you’re looking for him?”
“A favor for a friend.”
“Uh-huh,” Carl says. “This friend in some kind of trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Don’t work too hard, yeah?”
“Who, me?” He laughs, but he rubs a hand over a weary face that’s just starting to wrinkle. I want to tell him to cut out the cigarettes, to stop working so much, but I don’t.
“Take care, Carl.”
“So how do you know the coroner?” Jane asks hollowly when we get back to my apartment.
“Deda used to drive for the morgue, back in the day,” I say, without going into much detail. Human bone is useful in spells, but hard to get your hands on, unless you know which bodies are being donated to science.
Jane nods, her attention clearly elsewhere.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, tossing the file of dead bodies on top of my books.
“It’s just . . . there were so many dead people,” she says, touching the bloody cut along her neck.
“It’s a big city,” I say.
Jane looks down at her fingers, the edges smeared with red. “Shit,” she says. “I can’t make it stop today.” Her shoulders slump, and she turns away from me.
I reach out, years of restraint making me hesitate, but then my hand curls lightly around her shoulder. Her body goes still, and then with a shudder she relaxes and her arms uncross, heat melting into my side.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I tell her.
Jane pulls away from my arm, and for a moment I miss her warmth.
“Whoever it is could be hurting more people,” she says. “Why can’t I remember?”
“You didn’t remember me until you saw me again,” I say gently, “so we figure out who you saw that day. We go over that last day hour by hour, talk to everyone who was with
you, spoke to you, even saw you. We know you were at the club. . . .” I trail off, my brain lighting up.
“What? What is it?” Jane asks.
“The tapes from the security cameras at the club. The cops looked at them, but maybe if you watch them, you’ll remember. At least we can see who you were with.”
I’m already calling Ilia as Jane nods slowly.
“What?” he snaps into the phone.
“How long does Urie keep the footage from the security cameras?”
“Excuse me?”
“I need to see the footage from that night, from every camera.”
“Shit,” Ilia says, understanding. “The hard drive only keeps it a few days before it records over.”
I close my eyes. “So it’s gone?”
“Not exactly,” Ilia says, “The cops saved the footage, but they took it with them.”
“How could you let them take it?”
“Maybe if we had a little warning they were coming, we could have done something about it,” Ilia says, voice dangerous.
I breathe out hard. “I messed up; I get it,” I say. “I’m trying to make it right. Can you get me that footage? I need Jane to watch it.”
“Who’s Jane?”
“The dead girl, Ilia. Can you get it for me or not?”
Ilia makes a frustrated sound. “Give me a couple days. I need to call in some favors from our people on the force. You owe me, Lex.”
“Understood.”
I hang up and look at Jane. “We watch those tapes. We talk to everyone. We find something to make you remember.”
Jane meets my eyes solemnly. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s work from the beginning. Where would you be in the morning?”
Jane puffs out her cheeks, lets out a sigh. “My house,” she says reluctantly. “I’d be at home.”
Jane’s home is a flat-roofed duplex in El Segundo, the front yard full of gravel and sprinkled with potted succulents. A plastic lawn chair sits by its lonesome, dirt and dust ground into the slats. Jane stares at the front of the house, and a muscle in her cheek tightens.
“So if ghosts are real,” Jane says to me from the front seat, “what else is real? Magic?”
I nod.
“Vampires?” I roll my eyes and she shrugs. “What? I don’t know; it’s possible.”
“No, vampires aren’t real. Although witches can get weird with blood on full moons.”
“Gross,” she says.
It doesn’t escape me that she’s stalling.
“Was it that bad?” I ask. “When you came back?”
Her jaw tightens again. “My mother . . .” She stops. “We don’t—didn’t—always get along. Being dead doesn’t really change that.”
It’s suddenly hard for me to breathe, a block of ice in my lungs.
“No,” I say, my voice tinny in my ears. “It doesn’t.”
“Let’s just get this over with.”
I nod and walk up the small path to the screen-covered door and ring the bell. It buzzes inside, and I wait a long minute before trying again.
“Maybe she’s not home,” I say. “We can wait for her.”
“We’ll be waiting a long time,” Jane says, crossing her arms. “There’s a key under the flowerpot.”
“I can’t just go in,” I tell her.
“Why not?” She shrugs. “It’s my house. I’m giving you permission.”
“Yeah, but that’s not exactly going to work if someone calls the cops.”
“Look, my computer is connected to my phone. We can check my messages and see if anything weird happened.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, crouching down by the cactus. “I’m getting it.”
I dig under the pot, unlock the door, and step inside.
The hallway is dark and leads into a small and cluttered living room, a futon taking up one side and a yellow armchair on the other. The TV is dusty, the coffee table piled with dirty cups and a half-empty bottle of vodka.
“Home sweet home.” Jane paces around the room, her hand trailing through framed photos of her as a child, a smiling girl with pigtails, a chubby baby with a bow. She stops in front of a stack of “missing” posters with a posed school photo that doesn’t look anything like her.
“I hate this one,” she mutters. “I look like a shitty lawyer.”
“I think you look pretty,” I say, but she doesn’t respond.
Two cats stretch up from the couch, and the calico one jumps down and tries to rub against Jane’s legs.
“Jimmie?” she says, glancing down in astonishment. “You can see me?”
The cat goes through Jane’s feet and it makes a disgruntled sound.
“Cats can see me?” Jane repeats, looking up at me.
“Sometimes,” I say. “It sort of depends on the cat.”
“Depends on what?”
I shrug. “If they feel like it. Is anything coming back to you?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet. Come on,” she says, “my room is this way.”
Jane leads me down another hallway and stops in front of a closed door, her hand going through the knob when she tries to open it.
“Oh,” she says, letting her arm drop. “Right. You better do this part.”
I reach forward and open the door, stepping aside so she can go in first. The room is bright with color, the walls a cheerful yellow and covered in frames of bold artwork. Jane’s bed is unmade, a pink and turquoise quilt shoved to one side.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” she says. She tries to straighten the blanket and her hands melt through it. “Dammit.”
“It’s okay; I like it,” I say, and I’m being honest.
“Well, here,” Jane says, going to the small white desk in the corner. It’s covered in stickers and photographs, snapshots of Jane with her tongue sticking out, with her arm around a girl with dark hair. “Get the laptop.”
I pull out the chair and sit at the desk, moving a notebook out of the way. I stop, taking a closer look at the sketch it’s open to.
“Did you do this?” I ask. It’s a long-haired girl sitting cross-legged inside a fish bowl, the lines sure and dark.
“Yeah,” Jane says, ducking her head. “It’s just a sketch.”
I look up at the art on the walls, the paintings in a similar style.
“You’re an artist?”
“I guess,” she says. “I mean, I like to draw.”
“You’re good,” I say. “Really.”
“Thanks,” Jane says, clearly uncomfortable with my praise. “It’s just a hobby.”
“If you say so,” I tell her, looking down at the sketchbook. “Can I have this one?”
Jane blinks at me. “Why?”
“Because I like it. And I don’t have any art in my place.”
“I mean, sure. If you want it.”
“Thanks,” I say, carefully peeling the page out.
“Can we do this now?”
“Yeah, hold on.” I fold up the picture carefully and put it in my largest pocket, then open the laptop. “Password?”
Jane clears her throat. “Baby Jane, one word.”
I turn to look at her and she scowls.
“What? It’s a good movie. Bette Davis was nominated for an Oscar.”
I shake my head and type the password and the computer lights up.
“Do you have Find My Phone? Maybe it’s still with your body.”
“Shit,” Jane says. “No.”
Of course. Why would any of this be easy?
“What am I looking for?”
“Messages,” Jane says, pointing at the blue bubble. “There’s a lot of them.”
I click on the messages and scroll through them.
Text me when you get home ok
Jane?
Hello?
Call me in the morning
Jane call me please! I’m starting to freak out!
JANE WHERE ARE YOU
“They’re mostly from Macy,” I tell her.
“Some from your mom. Some from Delilah. Looks like she e-mailed you, too.”
Jane leans over me, bracing one hand on the desk. “Nothing from Isaac?”
I look back at the messages. “No. Who’s Isaac?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I say, and my voice sounds too loud. “I didn’t—you have a boyfriend?”
Jane rubs one arm, staring at the computer. “Not anymore, I guess. Being dead kind of creates a problem for the relationship.”
“Right,” I say.
“What about earlier messages?” Jane asks. “Go back.” Her arm brushes against my cheek, and I instinctively shift away before realizing it won’t hurt me.
“This one from Macy is at three. I’m by the courtyard.”
“That’s when school gets out,” Jane says.
“The last exchange with Isaac is from the morning,” I say, scrolling back. “You wrote What time is the concert tonight?”
Jane leans in to read Isaac’s response. “8:00. Can you meet me in the music room?”
“Do you remember meeting him?” I ask.
Jane shakes her head. “The concert must have been his. He’s a cellist.”
“If you were supposed to be at a concert, how did you end up at a club downtown? And why didn’t he text you after that?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says, shaking her head. “That doesn’t make any—”
We both hear the car pull up at the same time, and I slam the computer shut.
“Back door,” Jane says quickly. “Hurry.”
She runs through the living room and into the kitchen, pushing me toward the door near the washer and dryer. I unlock it and slip outside, shutting it behind me as quietly as I can.
“This way,” Jane says, motioning me to the side of the house. “We can go around to the front.”
“Hold on,” I say, carefully using the key to relock the back door.
“She won’t even notice either way,” Jane says, her hands on her hips.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” I say, my pulse jumping. I follow Jane along the side of the house and we pop out by a car parked in the driveway. A woman is getting out of the driver’s side, struggling with a paper grocery bag.
“She always forgets the cloth bags,” Jane says.
The woman stands up and seems to feel my eyes on her; she turns around and I get a good look at her face.
Missing, Presumed Dead Page 8