by Chelsea Cain
A few more blocks after that, she’d had enough.
Her feet hurt. She was getting blisters between her toes. She needed Band-Aids. Her jeans were soaked.
She lit a cigarette and called Archie again. Once again, his voice mail picked up after one ring. It was making her a little mad. “It’s me,” she said. “Susan. Again.” She didn’t know what he could do, just that he could do something. Call a tow truck or something. Get her a ride. Then she saw the mint-green Nissan Cube.
She searched out a street address off a nearby house. The two thousand block of Division.
“Never mind,” she said to Archie’s voice mail. “I see Heil.” And she hung up.
It had to be Heil’s car. How many mint-green Nissan Cubes had been sold nationwide? Five? Six, maybe?
He was parked in front of a weird little boxy house with a steeply pitched roof. The houses on either side looked pretty similar. The house number was 2051. It seemed familiar. She thought she remembered that being the first address from his list.
Curb space was plentiful, so Heil probably would have parked right out front.
It had to be the house.
Susan stood in the rain, suddenly filled with uncertainty. Rain pelted her coat. She’d call him. She’d call and tell him she was outside, explain what had happened, and ask for a ride.
She looked up his number in her contact list and clicked on it. It rang. He didn’t pick up.
He was probably interviewing the aquarium nerd and didn’t want to be interrupted.
She stood there some more. She could feel strips of wet hair sealing to the sides of her face.
She took a drag off the cigarette.
It was just a ride. She’d talk to him, and then she’d wait on the porch.
She hurried up the walk, took the four steps up the stoop in one leap, and rang the doorbell before she lost her nerve. At the last moment she remembered to put out the cigarette.
A man answered the door. He had dark hair. Maybe in his forties. Archie’s age. He didn’t look like him, though. He was round in all the places Archie was angular. Not fat, just a little soft. But he was taller than Archie. He loomed.
Susan looked up and smiled. “Is Detective Heil here?” she asked.
“Come on in,” he said. “He’s right here.”
She only blanched for a second. Heil was inside. Plus the guy had a kid. She could see Star Wars toys on the living room carpet behind him.
He held the door open for her.
She thanked him as she stepped inside.
CHAPTER
46
Susan didn’t notice the man’s army-green chest-high rubber waders until she got inside. They were held up by black suspenders over a golf shirt. The boots were beaded with water up to the knees. A trail of wet footprints led down the carpeted hall behind him.
“Basement’s flooded,” he explained.
Susan didn’t move from just inside the door. “That sucks,” she said.
Rain smacked against the front window. It sounded like water boiling.
The living room was small but organized. Paperbacks were lined up perfectly on the bookshelf. The CDs were housed in wicker CD towers. He had a gray leather couch, and one of those rattan half-shell chairs a lot of people bought in the seventies and which had been populating thrift stores ever since. There was a deck of Uno cards on the glass coffee table. Besides the Star Wars figures, it was the only other sign of a kid in the room.
She didn’t see Heil.
The man stooped and started gathering up the action figures. “I think the storm runoff put pressure on the water main,” he said. “Your friend’s downstairs. He was helping me move a few things.”
Susan’s shoulders relaxed a little.
He dropped the action figures in a shoe box and put the shoe box on the coffee table next to the Uno deck. “You can come in,” he said. “Take a seat. I’ll give him a shout.”
She started to take off her boots.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve already tracked muck all over the rug. I have to get a steam cleaner in here anyway. Can I take your coat?”
“Um, sure,” Susan said. She could feel rivulets of water running down her neck and between her breasts. She peeled off the wet vinyl slicker and held it out, and he hung it on a hanger in a closet by the door. Susan caught a glimpse of the black jacket Heil had been wearing on the hanger next to it.
“You’re drenched,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll get you a towel.”
She stood dripping on the mat while he disappeared down the hall, presumably to the bathroom.
She was chilled now that she was inside. Her black jeans stuck to her skin, gathering too tightly in all the crevices. When she got home, she was taking a bubble bath.
A door creaked open. There followed the sound of shuffling downstairs, and then a muffled voice. Good. He was telling Heil she was here. He’d be up in a minute, and they could go. If he wanted to be a Good Samaritan he could come back after he took her home.
She looked around the room some more. He had a framed Wyland poster above the couch—a glowing moon rising over a pod of orcas. There was a shooting star in the purple and pink sky. White cursive script ran across the poster below the image.
Susan inched forward to read it. It was a quote from the artist.
THE SEA IS FILLED WITH LIGHT AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Gag me, she thought.
“Here you go,” the man said, tossing her a thick magenta towel.
She caught it and dried her face, and then squeezed a tablespoon of water from her hair. “Thanks,” she said. She looked behind him, but he was alone. “Did you tell Heil I was here?”
“He’ll be right up,” the man said. “Have a seat.”
Susan rubbed the towel along her legs, patted down her neck, wrung her hair out again, and then lifted her sweater up, slipped the towel underneath, and, as delicately as she could, blotted her chest and underarms. “Excuse me,” she said. Then she folded the damp towel, set it on the couch, and perched carefully on it. The couch wasn’t real leather anyway.
He sat in the rattan chair. His waders squeaked. “Shouldn’t be long,” he said.
She looked around some more. The whale print was the only marine-related thing in the room. He didn’t seem like much of an aquarium nerd to her.
“So you’re into fish?” she said.
“I have a few aquariums. They’re all in the basement. That’s what your friend was helping me with. They’re running on emergency power now, but the generators won’t last, and once the systems shut down I’m going to have a lot of dead fish on my hands.”
It was suddenly making sense. Heil was the kind of guy who’d get suckered into some sort of massive goldfish airlift. The man probably had Heil doing all the heavy lifting.
The man. She still didn’t know his name.
She held a hand out and smiled. “I’m Susan Ward,” she said.
He leaned forward and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
Then he glanced toward the basement. “I should get back down there,” he said. “There’s a lot to do.”
“I’ll come with you and say hello to Heil,” she said.
He looked at her boots. “It’s deep,” he said.
She ran her hand over her hair—it felt like seaweed. “I don’t think I can get any wetter.”
She followed him to the basement door. There was a big industrial flashlight on the carpet and he picked it up, turned it on, and pointed it down the steep, skinny wooden stairs. “I had to throw the breaker,” he said. “Most flood-related deaths are due to electrocution.”
But it wasn’t dark, exactly. She could see light reflecting on the water.
“I’ve got those IKEA push lights,” he said. “Battery-operated. You just stick them right on the wall.”
“Heil?” Susan called.
“He’s in the aquarium room,” the man said.
“The what?”
“It�
�s the old root cellar. I’ll show you.”
She could already taste the sourness of old concrete and laundry detergent in her mouth.
She should have just walked home.
“You go first,” Susan said.
“Sure,” he said. They both had to turn sideways for him to get by her and for a moment they were face-to-face, or rather face-to-bottom-of-chin. Then he pressed against the wall and slipped past her.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he shone the flashlight back for her to follow. The water came up to just below his knees.
Susan took each stair carefully, one hand on the rough concrete wall, one hand on the splintered wooden railing. “Have you called someone?” she asked.
“Half the basements in town are flooded,” he said. “They say it might be four days.”
She got to the bottom, to the water’s edge. The stairs led to a large unfinished room with a washer and dryer in the corner next to a stained utility sink. Two round lights the size of salad plates were affixed to two of the walls, providing about as much light as you’d find in a bar bathroom. Just enough to do your business, but not enough to see anything that might trouble you.
The man turned off the flashlight, but didn’t put it down. There was nowhere to put it. The water was opaque and bobbed with basement flotsam—a box of dryer sheets, a Christmas ornament, a soccer ball.
Susan dipped the toe of her boot in the water and felt for the edge of the step. Then another, and another. Until she was standing on the basement floor. When she took the last step she heard a sucking sound, and cold water rushed into the tops of her boots, filling them.
“I want to see Heil,” Susan said. Her feet felt heavy and cold. She had to drag them to take a step.
“He’s in here,” the man said, wading to a far door. The door was the newest thing in the room.
“I told him I could handle it,” the man continued. “But he said he wouldn’t leave until he’d saved the queen angel. They’re expensive. Five, six hundred.”
“Dollars?” Susan said, trudging after him.
“Sure. Your friend recognized her right away. Apparently he’s a bit of an aquarium enthusiast himself.”
He opened the door and Susan was engulfed in tranquil blue light.
She heard Heil shout her name from somewhere inside the room. But she didn’t have time to respond. All at once she was stumbling, her center of gravity gone, her feet out from under her. She didn’t know why at first. Then she realized that she’d been pushed from behind. She couldn’t recover from it—she fell forward, belly-flopping into the water with a splash. It was disgusting. She got water in her mouth. In her eyes. In her hair. She flipped over and sat up, the water to her armpits, and looked accusingly at the door. It was closed. He’d pushed her in and closed the door behind her.
“Asshole,” she said struggling to get up.
“Susan,” she heard Heil say again. She looked over and saw him now, standing in the water in front of a wall of ghostly blue tanks. He glanced at the water, his face tense. He was perfectly still. “Don’t move,” he said.
CHAPTER
47
So this was the aquarium room. There were tanks on all four walls, lined up side by side on floor-to-ceiling shelves. There were at least fifty of them. They were the room’s sole illumination, a Caribbean blue filtered through gels. Some of the tanks were lit with black lights, creating a dizzying array of incandescent fish and coral. Pink. Blue. Purple. Susan’s hair had been all those shades.
Heil’s voice was smooth and firm, each word carefully enunciated. The black light made his eyes and teeth a dazzling unnatural white. “Now stand up, very, very slowly.”
“What. The. Fuck?” Susan said.
She followed his gaze to a wall of aquariums. All four of the room’s walls were lined with shelves of aquariums. But the aquariums on this wall were empty.
“There are seven of those tanks,” Heil said. “Each one had a blue-ring in it.”
It took her a second to understand.
They were in the water. She was sitting in it up to her chest.
She made a strangled cat sound and started to get up.
“Stop,” Heil said quickly.
His urgency froze her in her tracks.
“Listen to me,” he said. “They’re not aggressive. They’ll only bite if you brush up against them. You just need to stand up slowly. Don’t slosh.”
Susan’s mouth felt dry. How did you stand up from a seated position without sloshing? She was on her butt. Her hands were on the floor behind her. Her legs were out in front, bent at the knee. If she stood up, she’d have to move through the water. She’d touch one of those things and it would bite her and she’d suffocate and her heart would stop. She was just going to stay where she was. She would sit there in the water and wait for someone to come get them out of there.
“Stand up, Susan,” Heil said.
She didn’t move. “Why can’t I stay like this?”
“Because they’re swimming around in here, and your odds of getting in one’s way are directly related to the surface area you have in the water.”
An excellent observation.
“I thought they couldn’t survive in this kind of water,” Susan said.
“They can live briefly in it,” Heil said. He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Susan said.
But she still couldn’t move.
“Are you going to stand up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
She wondered if her teeth looked like that.
“Give me a minute,” she said.
She looked down toward her right hand and began to incrementally lift it to the surface of the water. Every cell in her arm hummed with electrical current, ready to react at the slightest contact with solid matter. When her hand broke the surface and eased out of the water, it was like Susan had never seen her hand before. It looked incredible and marvelous. A hand!
“What are you doing here?” Heil asked.
“My engine stalled,” Susan said.
She moved on to the other hand now. “I was walking home and I saw your car.” Measured, steady breaths. “I wanted a ride.” Finally, she had both hands up above the waterline. Now all she had to do was get to her feet. She inhaled deeply, mentally anchored her feet to the floor, and lunged slowly forward.
It didn’t work.
She couldn’t get the leverage without her hands.
“Use your stomach muscles,” Heil said.
She was going to die because she didn’t have rock-hard abs.
Then she saw a dimple in the water, just a few feet away from her knees. Heil saw it, too. She heard his intake of breath. The adrenaline was enough to power her forward and up on her feet. She didn’t do it slowly. Water streamed down her body and rippled outward all around her. She hugged her arms and waited for something to bump against her leg. The water settled.
Susan’s panting slowed.
She looked over at Heil. “So I guess he’s the guy you’ve been looking for?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“Is help on the way?”
He didn’t answer.
Surely he’d called for backup. “Is it?” she said.
He looked her in the eye. She’d never seen his face so serious. “My phone doesn’t work down here.”
She let that sink in. Okay. That was bad. But they still had options. She had a phone. A smartphone. If she couldn’t get anyone on the horn at 911, at least she should update her Facebook status. Susan Ward is: being menaced by octopuses and wants her friends to save her. “I’ll try mine,” she said. The realization hit her as soon as the words left her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
She could see it sitting at the foot of the fake leather sofa. “I left my purse upstairs.”
“I thought you never put your purse down,” Heil said.
“Shut up.”
&nb
sp; She looked up at the ceiling and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Someone help us! We’re down here! Hey!”
“I think it’s soundproof,” Heil said softly.
She squinted. He was right. There was some sort of thick padding on the walls and ceiling, held in place by a metal grid. She felt the prickly sensation of panic under her skin.
“I’ve tried,” he said.
Why would someone soundproof a room full of aquariums?
Then she realized: “He kept the kid down here,” she said.
“There’s a folded-up cot over there,” Heil said, lifting his chin toward a wall of electric-blue tanks.
The toys upstairs. The deck of cards. She was shaking. She couldn’t stop herself. “So where’s the boy now?” Susan said.
“I don’t know,” Heil said.
“I called Archie,” Susan said. “I left him a message. I told him that my car broke down and I saw you.” She looked down at the cold water. The light from the aquariums reflected off the surface, giving it a turquoise sheen. Don’t move, she told herself. Just don’t move. “He’ll come for us,” she said.
CHAPTER
48
It was hard not to move. Susan’s leg was cramping up. She couldn’t stop shivering. How long had it been? Fifteen minutes, twenty? Her feet ached from the cold, from standing in flat rubber boots on concrete.
She should have stayed with the car. You were supposed to stay with the car. Everyone knew that.
Where was Archie?
“My leg hurts,” Susan said.
The blue glow all around them was not tranquil anymore. It made her head hurt. The black lights made everything look radioactive.
Heil was scanning the water. She noticed that he had a pattern, like he was tracing the spokes of a wheel. She hardly knew anything about him. Now she felt bad about that. She should have shown an interest.