by Chelsea Cain
He took his gun out of his shoulder holster and leveled it at the water in front of him.
“What are you doing?” Susan asked.
“I’m going to try to get to the door,” Heil said. “And if I see one of those things, I’m going to shoot it.”
Susan looked around at all the glass and concrete. Wouldn’t a bullet ricochet in there?
“Why don’t we wait?” she said.
“I’m going to try to get to the door,” he said again. He swallowed hard and slid one foot forward an inch, eyes trained on the water along with his gun.
He was going to get himself killed. They should wait for Archie. He was on his way.
Heil inched his other foot closer to her, to the door.
“Keep talking to me,” he said.
She couldn’t think of anything to say. “Do you like fish?”
“I used to.”
“What kind?”
He tilted his head at the north wall of aquariums. “See those weird silver fish that are shaped like little axes?” he said.
Susan scanned the tanks until she saw a dozen shiny silver fish with flat tops and large beer bellies. “The ones zipping around the top of their tank?” she said.
“They’re hatchetfish,” Heil said. “Good, dependable aquarium fish. They’re social. They like to hang out. Jump around. They’ll jump right out of the tank if you don’t keep a lid on it. They live longer if they have friends. So you want to keep a school of at least six.”
He was only a few feet away from her now, halfway to the door.
The water rippled between them. “Did you see that?” Susan said.
He leveled his gun at it. “Yes.”
“I think you should stand still.” She felt something move past her leg and she yelped.
“What?” Heil said, alarmed.
Susan lip started to quiver. “I think something bumped me.”
“Where?”
“On the knee,” she whimpered. Had she been bitten? She couldn’t tell. “Does it hurt, when they bite?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Heil said.
She was breathing too fast. Hyperventilating. “I can’t catch my breath,” she said. She bent over, gripped her thighs with her palms, and tried to think of something besides dying. Song lyrics. Think of song lyrics. Load up on guns / bring your friends / it’s fun to lose and to pretend.
She could feel her breathing slowing back down to normal. She was okay. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
Heil didn’t answer.
She stood up. “Heil?”
He was studying his hand.
“What is it?” she said.
He looked over at her with a perplexed expression on his face. “My hand feels numb.”
Then he turned his head, leaned over, and vomited into the water. The vomit swirled and then sank, leaving an acidic tang in the air.
“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” Heil said. “I…” He took a couple of sharp, short breaths. “I can’t feel my hands.”
“It’s okay,” Susan said. She worked to keep her expression calm. It took every ounce of her willpower not to burst into tears. “You need to come to me. Before you fall.”
He looked up at her. The gun fell from his hand with a plunk into the water.
Susan held her arms out to him as if he were a child. “Come to me,” she said.
Heil was looking at the spot in the water where the gun had dropped.
“Leave it,” Susan said. “You don’t need it.”
He turned his neon-white eyes up toward her and stumbled forward.
She caught him under the armpits as he fell, so that his face was pressed into the front of her shoulder.
“We’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”
He was too heavy. She couldn’t hold him like this; he was already slipping from her grasp. She lowered him into the water on his knees and cradled his head against her hip with both hands.
“I know you can hear me,” she said.
CHAPTER
49
The hatchetfish swam happily in their tank, their silver bodies shimmering like coins.
Heil had not taken a breath in a long time.
Susan still hung on to him.
“You’re okay,” she kept saying. “You’re okay.”
She hadn’t seen any more ripples in the water. But she’d stopped looking. She didn’t want to know. If she didn’t see them, then they weren’t there.
The hatchetfish seemed so content, not a care in the world. She hated them.
Heil sank an inch lower and she repositioned him. Her whole body was stiff. Her feet ached. She was standing in knee-high water, wet and cold and shivering. But she was not going to let him go.
She heard someone at the other side of the door. She didn’t know if it was the killer or a rescuer, and she didn’t care. “Hello?” she cried. “I need help! Please! Let us out of here!”
The door swung open.
Susan’s heart sank. The man was back. He still wore the waders, but now he had added a coat, like he was going somewhere. He stood in the doorway for a moment, the aquariums bathing him in blue light.
“I need you to help me,” he said to Susan.
Susan turned away from the door and hugged Heil tighter. “I’m not leaving him.”
The man tromped through the water over to her and put a hand on the back of Heil’s neck. Then he checked under his jaw for a pulse.
“He’s dead,” the man said.
Susan could feel tears slipping down her cheeks.
The man looked at the water. “They’re still alive,” he said. “If they were dead they’d be floating.”
That’s why he was here, Susan realized. The blue-rings were going to die soon. With them gone, she might have gotten out of there. She would have had a chance.
The man pulled Heil out of her arms and pushed him into the water. Susan could barely breathe.
He yanked Susan’s arms behind her back and tied her wrists together with some sort of twine while she watched Heil sink below the water’s surface.
“I’m going to pick you up,” the man said.
One of the hatchetfish flung itself against the lid of its tank.
Susan’s whole body was trembling.
He scooped her up, carrying her as if she were an infant. She sobbed, relieved to be out of the water, terrified to be in his arms. He hauled her out of the aquarium room and through the laundry room to the bottom of the stairs, where Patrick Lifton sat just above the waterline gripping a Star Wars figure between his hands.
“Patrick?” Susan said.
The boy scurried up a few steps to make room, and the man set her down on her feet a few steps below.
Susan wiped the tears and snot from her face. “Everyone’s looking for you, Patrick. Your parents miss you.”
The boy’s eyes darted to the man and then back at Susan.
“Let’s go,” the man said, and he gave Susan a push. The boy sprang up and took the steps two at a time. Susan trudged behind him. When they got to the kitchen the man told the boy to get his coat and the boy left the room.
The man was going to kill her. Susan knew it. He was going to take her somewhere and kill her and they would never find the body.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
His eyes were small and he blinked at her for a moment. “Roy,” he said.
She nodded. Now she was certain. She was going to die. He wouldn’t have told her his name if he’d planned on letting her live.
The boy returned, wearing an oversized black raincoat.
“Can I have a glass of water?” he asked the man.
It was the first sentence Susan had heard him speak.
“Hurry,” Roy said.
The boy went to the sink and got a glass from a dish drying rack on the counter, filled it with tap water, and drank a few sips. Then he poured the rest down the drain and set the glass on the counter in front
of him.
“Come on,” Roy said. He opened the back door, cursed at the rain, and put up his hood. Then he put his hand on the back of Susan’s neck and led her outside, behind the house, into the night. There was an unattached garage back there, and a car parked in the driveway in front of it. A sedan. Dark-colored. Nondescript. Even looking right at it, Susan couldn’t have described it.
The rain hissed all around them.
“Where are we going?” Susan asked. Raindrops pelted her bare head and stung her hands.
“To get supplies.”
Roy opened the back door and shoved her, shivering, in the backseat. The boy got in after her, and she slid over to the other side to make room, leaving a damp stain in her wake. She noticed he didn’t have the Star Wars figure anymore.
Roy got in the front seat and fingered a switch, and the chrome lock on Susan’s door snapped down with a deadening finality.
As they pulled out onto Division, Susan saw the blue and red glow of police lights straight ahead at a distant intersection.
They had found her car.
CHAPTER
50
Archie hunched against the weather. The patrol cop who’d found Susan’s car was closing off the intersection, setting up reflective sawhorses so other drivers wouldn’t make the same mistake that Susan had. The pool of standing water was a vast glassy black and deeper than it looked. The raindrops exploded as they hit it, making the water look almost like it was simmering.
Archie had checked the abandoned vehicle report after he’d gotten Susan’s messages. Her Saab, which had drifted into the middle of Twelfth Avenue, had just been called in.
So much for the nap that he’d been planning.
The Saab had clearly been knocked around. The driver’s-side mirror was missing, and the paint job had been scratched bumper to bumper. Archie looked around for what she’d hit, and spotted a pickup truck with a crumpled fender. He made his way over to it and saw a folded piece of paper under its windshield wiper. She’d left a note.
He leaned over the hood, lifted the wiper blade up, and peeled the sopping paper from the wet glass. He recognized the size of the lined paper as a page from Susan’s notebook. The ink had bled, but he could still make out the gist of what she’d written.
He folded the note in half, put it back under the wiper where she’d left it, and returned to the Cutlass.
“Anything?” he asked Flannigan when he got in the car.
“Heil’s still not picking up. Ngyun hasn’t heard from him since he left the office.”
“She said she was going to walk,” Archie said.
Flannigan held up his notebook, showing a page covered in a hurried scribble.
“What’s that?” Archie asked.
“It’s the list of addresses Heil was tracking down. Ngyun found them in the MapQuest history on Heil’s computer.”
Archie took the notebook and tried to make out the words. It looked like it was in another language.
“There are two in this neighborhood,” Flannigan said. “One in Ladd’s Addition, and one at Twentieth and Division.”
Archie looked out the rain-streaked window. The world was a dark and blurry place.
Division would have been on Susan’s way home.
He could tell that Flannigan was thinking the same thing.
“Let’s go,” Archie said.
He backed down Twelfth and took side streets around to Division, avoiding the flooded intersection.
Division was a two-lane street, but it was an arterial and usually busy. Not tonight. Archie only saw one other set of headlights as they made their way east, passing under dark traffic lights and past closed bars. The commercial buildings quickly gave way to the residential ones, with small bungalows on one side and older, larger houses on the other.
Water gushed along the curbside.
“There,” Flannigan said.
Archie saw it, too. Heil’s car.
Flannigan glanced down at his notes and then squinted at the house numbers. “He’s parked right in front of the house,” he said.
Archie turned the wheel and pulled into the driveway, sending a spray of water up from the gutter.
The house was simple and compact. One-story. No frills. The living room light was on, but the curtains were drawn.
It had been over an hour since Susan had left her second voice mail. If she had stumbled upon Heil and everything was fine, they wouldn’t still be here.
Archie and Flannigan got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Archie bent down and picked up a mushy cigarette butt from the concrete stoop. It had berry lipstick around the filter.
He rang the doorbell.
They waited.
No one answered.
The rain flowing through the house’s gutters sounded like a waterfall.
Flannigan banged on the door with the side of his fist.
“Look around back,” Archie said.
Flannigan jogged off across the muddy yard and disappeared around the side of the house.
Archie tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. No one in Portland locked their doors. It was one of the reasons the city had such a high burglary rate.
He opened the door. “Police,” he said. “Anyone home?”
Archie listened. All he could hear was the sound of the overwhelmed gutters and the rain sweeping against the windows.
A trail of wet footprints led away from the door and across the carpet. “Hello?” he said. He took a small step inside, just onto the mat, and looked around.
He unsnapped his holster and put his hand on his gun. His eyes immediately fell on Susan’s purse sitting by the sofa.
His shoulders tensed. “Susan?” he called. “Heil?”
Archie drew his gun. “This is the police,” he said again. “I’m coming in.” He moved slowly into the house and made his way to the kitchen, following the footprints.
Flannigan met him at the back door. “Car’s gone,” he said. “There’s a garage out back.”
“Susan’s purse is in the living room,” Archie said. The footprints ended at the basement door. “Call for backup. I’m going down there.” He swung the basement door open and saw the brown water below. “Shit,” he said.
“This is the police,” Archie yelled. “I’m coming down the stairs.”
He drew his weapon and took the stairs sideways with his gun held at a forty-degree angle. The flooded room at the bottom of the stairs was empty, but there was another door. It had been left ajar and Archie could see the distinctive blue glow of aquarium lights.
He moved into the thigh-deep water, bracing against the cold, and made his way to the door. A round glass Christmas ornament floated past him. “Susan?” he called again.
The door was steel—a fire door—the owner of the house wanted to protect whatever was in there. Archie raised his gun and pushed it open.
The room was full of fish.
The tanks lit the room with an aqua gleam.
There was no one in there. They were gone.
Archie lowered his gun.
Then he saw something in the water.
It bobbed at the surface, a knot of flesh—the size of a golf ball. Archie took a step back. The water in the room was full of blue-ringed octopuses.
He counted a half dozen, at least.
They were all at the surface, limp, not moving.
Dead. Nothing could live in that water for long.
“What’s going on down there?” Flannigan called. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Stay up there,” Archie hollered. “I’ve got dead octopuses down here.” He looked down at the water. He hoped they were all dead.
Archie had backed out of the room and was closing the door when he saw the shadow. It was nothing he could really discern, just a sense of something, a shape, under the water.
Still, he felt a sickening tug at his gut.
There was a person under there.
He holstered his gun and stumbled forward into t
he room, feeling under the water until his hands found clothing, solid cold flesh, hair. Archie lifted the person’s head and shoulders out of the water.
It was Heil.
The dead blue-rings floated all around them.
“Call for EMTs,” Archie called up the stairs. “It’s Heil.”
Heil’s skin was chilled meat. Archie felt for a pulse and got nothing.
Bodies didn’t sink until the lungs had filled with water.
He needed to get him to a flat surface so he could start CPR.
Archie pulled Heil through the water, out the door, and into the main room of the basement.
Flannigan was at the bottom of the stairs. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Help me get him to the kitchen,” Archie said.
Flannigan took Heil under the arms, Archie grabbed under his knees and they half carried, half dragged him up the stairs. When they got to the kitchen they laid him flat on his back on the linoleum, a puddle of brown water already seeping from his clothes.
Flannigan knelt next to Heil’s head, so he could turn it to the side if Heil started coughing up water, and Archie started chest compressions. It was like pushing on rubber.
“He’s dead,” Flannigan said.
Archie kept working. “They can save him.”
“He’s dead, Archie. He’s been dead for a while.”
But Archie didn’t stop. CPR had worked on Henry.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Archie kept up the compressions. He focused on the count. One. Two. Three. Four. Push.
Flannigan reached out with a shaky hand and closed Heil’s eyes.
The sirens got louder.
Archie heard the emergency vehicles pulling up, then the front door opening.
“In here,” he yelled.
The EMTs trotted in and slid into squats next to him. One took over compressions, while the other checked Heil’s vitals, then peeled back his eyelids and checked his pupillary response with an ophthalmoscope. “He’s dead.”
The first EMT lifted her latex-gloved hands from Heil’s chest. They both looked at Archie and Flannigan.
Archie pulled himself to his feet.