by John Saul
For a moment Laurie made no response at all, but then her eyes opened, and she reached for her mother’s hand. “Th-thirsty,” she breathed, the word drifting from her lips in a nearly inaudible sigh.
“I’ll get something,” Kevin said. “Back in a second.” He disappeared from the room, reappearing a moment later with a glass of water. “I put some tea on,” he said as he held the glass to Laurie’s lips. As she tried to take the glass with a shaking hand, he got his first good look at the girl’s ashen face, and his gaze immediately shifted to Caroline. “She should be in a hospital.”
Caroline shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I—” And suddenly she could hold herself together no longer. With a great shudder she suddenly began to cry, her body shaking with sobs, and as Kevin gathered her into his arms, Ryan looked as if he might start crying to.
“Don’t you dare,” Mark Noble said, reading Ryan’s expression perfectly. “One of you has to tell us what’s going on, and since your mother’s bawling her brains out and your sister looks half dead, I guess it’s going to have to be you.”
His tears drying up instantly in the face of Mark’s words, Ryan gazed up at him uncertainly. “They were going to kill Laurie. And they already killed Rebecca, and some boy.”
“All right,” Mark said as calmly as if what Ryan had just said was the most reasonable thing in the world. “How were they going to do that? And just so I can keep clear on things, who are ‘they?’ ”
“Tony Fleming, and that Melanie person, and the doorman, and everybody else in that building!” Ryan’s voice took on a note of belligerence, and he glared at Mark as if he was sure he wasn’t being believed. “It’s true!”
“Hey, did you hear me arguing?” Mark asked, holding up his hands as if to fend Ryan’s words off.
“It is true,” Caroline said, fumbling for a handkerchief, not finding one, and finally wiping her eyes on the sleeve of the nurse’s uniform. “Look.” Very gently, she loosened the sheet she’d picked up along with Laurie, so the two men could see the needle marks on her arms and legs.
“Jesus,” Mark whispered, his doubts about what Ryan had told him now erased. “What’s going on over there?”
For the rest of the night, Caroline did her best to explain, telling Kevin and Mark everything that had happened since the day she’d moved into The Rockwell. They listened silently, never interrupting her, never questioning anything she said. Every now and then one of them brought Laurie more tea, or something to eat, and by the time Caroline was finished, dawn was starting to break, Ryan had fallen asleep in one of the big recliners facing the television set, and Laurie was starting to regain a little color in her face.
“I know it sounds insane, but it’s what happened. If Ryan hadn’t managed to get out, and find me—”
“How did he do that?” Mark asked.
“He found a way into the secret passages through the ceiling in his closet and heard Tony telling someone where I was. I think it must have been Sergeant Oberholzer, because he came to see me.” She looked bleakly at Kevin. “He didn’t believe a word I said, and I guess I can’t blame him. I mean, I was strapped to a bed in some kind of hospital.”
“Well, you’re not strapped to a bed now, and you’re not in a hospital. I think we’d better call him.”
Caroline paled. “Kevin, he doesn’t believe me! And if I call him—”
“Who else are you going to call?” Kevin Barnes countered. “If you won’t take Laurie to a hospital, and you won’t talk to the police, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know!” Caroline cried, her tears welling in her eyes again. “I just—oh, God, I’m just so frightened and tired and—”
“And you’re not thinking straight,” Kevin finished for her. “But if you won’t call Oberholzer, then I’m going to. He can come over here, and we won’t let him take you anywhere.”
“He’ll call Tony—” Caroline began, but Kevin shook his head. “I’ll tell him not to—I’ll tell him Tony beat you up or something.”
“Oh, God, he’ll never believe that—”
“Then I’ll tell him something else. But you have to talk to him.” As Caroline started to object yet again, he shook his head. “Either you talk to him, or you talk to a psychiatrist, Caroline.”
The last of the color drained out of Caroline’s face. “You don’t believe me!” she said, her voice rising. “You think I’m crazy!”
Kevin Barnes’s fingers closed on Caroline’s wrists, and he looked straight into her eyes. “I didn’t say that,” he said. “I’m not going to say any of it sounds sane, but it’s obvious that something’s going on over there. And at least Oberholzer knows you, and has already been in the building and talked to some of the people. So take your choice—let me call him and get him over here, or I’m going to have to call—” He hesitated, then finished: “—someone else.”
The hesitation was enough to tell Caroline that the ‘someone else’ would probably be an ambulance to take her to Bellevue. “All right,” she breathed. “Call him. But please, don’t let him call anyone else. Not anyone!”
Frank Oberholzer sat as silently through Caroline’s story as had Kevin and Mark the first time she’d told it.
He listened to everything Ryan had to say, and looked at the marks on Laurie’s arms and legs. Laurie was fully awake now, and when he asked her if she didn’t want to go to a doctor, she shook her head. “I’m just hungry,” she said. “I don’t feel sick—I just feel weak. Like Rebecca did.”
Oberholzer frowned. “Humphries said she was anemic.”
“Anemic,” Caroline spat. “Nobody’s ‘anemic’ anymore. If that were the problem, any decent doctor would have fixed it months ago! Oh, God, I should have listened to Andrea—she said there was something wrong. But I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her!”
“And now your theory is that they’re all really old, and are keeping their bodies alive by sucking stuff out of kids?” Oberholzer asked, his skepticism clear in his voice.
Caroline shook her head. “I think they’re dead, not old. When I scratched Tony’s face, the skin ripped loose almost like it was some kind of mask, and it was like his flesh was rotting underneath. And when I—” She fell silent as she remembered what she’d done to Rodney only a few hours earlier, slashing his throat without even thinking about it. Now, in the light of morning, she realized exactly what she’d done.
Murder.
There was no other word for it.
Except how could you murder someone who was already dead?
“The doorman was the same way,” she finally breathed. “As soon as the knife went into him, it was like he just came apart—there was a terrible odor and his fingers started swelling up, and his nails started turning black, and . . .” She shuddered as her voice died away, but then she regained her composure and looked directly into Oberholzer’s eyes. “They’re not old, Sergeant,” she said. “They’re dead. All of them.”
For nearly a full minute, Oberholzer said nothing at all, and when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to Caroline, but to someone he’d called on a cellphone he’d pulled from his jacket pocket. “We got any reports on anything at The Rockwell from last night or this morning?” There was a silence, then: “Look, send someone over there to take a look—see if there’s any problems in the lobby. Then call me back and let me know.”
He snapped the phone shut, and the silence stretched out again until it was finally broken by the sound of Oberholzer’s cellular phone ringing. He flipped it open, listened, grunted something, then closed it again.
“I think we better go over there,” he said, his voice as uncertain as the look that had now come into his eyes.
“They found him, didn’t they?” Caroline asked.
Oberholzer shook his head. “Not so far,” he said. “Far as anyone can tell, there’s no one in The Rockwell at all.”
“I’m not sure I can do this,” Caroline said. She and Frank Oberholzer were standin
g on Central Park West. The morning was crisp and sunny; half a dozen nannies were pushing as many strollers along the sidewalk, a couple of joggers ran by, dodging around them without breaking stride. A few elderly men and women were already feeding the squirrels in the park on the other side of the wall.
Across the street stood The Rockwell. Silhouetted against a cloudless turquoise sky with its eastern façade washed in the brilliant morning light, it should have looked handsomer than ever.
Instead, it had taken on a look of dismal foreboding.
The decades of grime seemed to have blackened it more than she remembered, and its windows, which always before had struck Caroline as one of the building’s best features, now seemed to be staring down at her with the blankness of death. But that was only her imagination—despite the people who lived in it, The Rockwell itself was still only a building. Yet as she gazed at it, and the terrible memories of the past few days tumbled through her mind, it seemed as if the building itself had taken on a look of evil.
Evil, and death.
“It—it looks different,” she said, unconsciously slipping her hand through Frank Oberholzer’s arm. Deliberately turning her eyes away from the building, she looked up at Oberholzer. “I’m really not sure I can go in.”
“You can,” he assured her. “I’m here, and my partner is waiting for us in the lobby. And believe me, she’s not by herself—we’ve got people on every floor.” Pressing her hand firmly against his arm—partly to reassure her, partly to make it hard for her to pull away—he stepped off the curb. “Come on—whatever’s been going on in there, it’s better to know.” When she still held back, he turned so he was looking straight at her. “We never found out who killed your first husband,” he said, abandoning the impersonal tone he usually affected when he was on duty. “And we haven’t found out who killed your friend. How many more questions do you want in your life? Or in your kids’ lives?”
“If Tony—” Caroline began, but Frank shook his head.
“Anthony Fleming’s not in there. Apparently nobody is. So you’re not in any danger. Come on.” He started across the street once again, and this time Caroline kept pace with him. They paused once more on the steps leading to the great oaken doors. “Ready?” Oberholzer asked. Caroline took a deep breath, then nodded, and the detective pulled one of the doors open.
Caroline stepped into the foyer, and a young woman in a simple navy blue suit pulled an inner door open as if she’d been waiting for her. The first thing that struck Caroline was the smell: the same terrible stench of death that had emanated from Rodney’s torn throat only a few hours ago now permeated the entire lobby. She took an involuntary step backward as the foul aroma filled her nostrils, and would have fled back out into the bright morning sunlight had not Frank Oberholzer’s firm hand held her steady.
“Jesus, Hernandez,” she heard the detective say. “Does the whole place smell like this?”
The woman in the navy blue suit nodded. “We haven’t figured out where it’s coming from. And you don’t get used to it, either. At least I haven’t.” She turned to Caroline and offered her hand. “I’m Detective Hernandez.”
Caroline barely noticed the proffered hand, and only half-heard what Maria Hernandez had said as she tried to get a grasp on what was happening.
Everything about the lobby had changed.
The furniture seemed to have grown decades older overnight—the sofa sagged, its cushions looked lumpy, and the upholstery on everything was frayed and faded. Nor was it just the furniture that had changed—the murals on the walls and ceiling had darkened to the point where they hung over the room like a funeral shroud, making it feel as if the strange world they depicted were somehow closing in around her. The sliver of moon—which had looked oddly brighter to Caroline only a few days ago—had somehow vanished, and the storm clouds appeared heavier and lower. The strange horned creatures that before had been barely visible in the thick foliage seemed now to have emerged, and were waiting eagerly to snatch scraps from the table around which the ravenous men sat consuming their feast.
But the feast had somehow gone, leaving the table bare except for some grisly stains that looked in the dim light of the lobby like congealing blood. The fireplace—which had always held a burning log no matter how hot the day or night—was dark, and even though Caroline was at least thirty feet from it she could feel a draft creeping from its depths.
A draft that felt as cold as death itself.
Shivering, she turned away from the fireplace and found herself looking straight at the doorman’s booth.
The booth in which lay Rodney’s body.
That was where the smell was coming from, of course. But why hadn’t they found him? Yet even as the question formed in her mind, so also the answer began to take shape, and almost against her own will she found herself walking toward the booth.
Her footsteps on the cold marble of the floor echoed in the gloom, for the sconces on the wall seemed unable to conquer the darkness that had fallen over the lobby, and the throbbing of Caroline’s own heart echoed the sound of her feet in its turn, growing louder with every step she took. She came at last to the booth, steeled herself against the heavy stench of death that seemed to be permeating her very pores, and looked over the counter to the floor behind it.
All she saw was bare marble—black and white marble—in the same checkerboard pattern as the rest of the lobby.
No sign of Rodney’s corpse, no spreading stain of his blood. Only the smell—the terrible smell that had spewed from his wound.
Frowning, feeling utterly disoriented, she turned to look at the woman in navy blue. “Where is he?” Her voice echoed in the emptiness, just as had her footsteps and the beating of her heart.
“Who?”
“The doorman,” Caroline breathed, her voice taking on an edge of desperation. “His name was Rodney.” Uncertainly, almost as if she was no longer certain exactly where she was, she turned back once more to the spot where she’d last seen him, his throat ripped and spewing blood, his fingers spasmodically reaching toward her. “He was here.” She hesitated, then: “He was dead.”
Hernandez shook her head. “Not there,” she said. “We didn’t find the doorman, or anybody else.”
Then Frank Oberholzer was beside her. “You want to show me where you found Laurie?”
Nodding silently, Caroline led him to the door to the basement, then down the stairs. Someone had turned on more lights, and the bright glare of naked bulbs had banished the dimness of the night before. When they came to the place where she’d slammed the door—slammed it on Tony’s fingers—then locked it before she and Ryan bolted upstairs, they found it standing open.
But there was no sign of Anthony Fleming’s fingers, nor even a stain on the concrete floor where she’d seen them fall.
They passed through the door, then down the narrow passage to the door behind which lay the room where Ryan had found Laurie. The uniformed officer who stood just outside raised his hand in something that wasn’t quite a salute.
“Lab guys aren’t here yet.”
“We’re not going to touch anything,” Oberholzer replied. “Just taking a look.”
This area, too, was brightly lit by bare bulbs that hung from the low ceiling. Six gurneys stood against the far wall; four of them were empty, but two were not.
On one of the gurneys lay all that was left of Rebecca Mayhew. Her abdomen gaped open; her torso had been gutted of its organs. Her skin had been stripped away to leave her decomposing flesh exposed, and her empty eye sockets gazed sightlessly upward. Maggots were still writhing in the rotting meat, and as Caroline and the detective drew close a cockroach vanished into one of Rebecca’s nostrils.
On the other gurney lay a boy, his body not yet gutted. He appeared to be a year or two older than Ryan, and everywhere his skin was scarred with the marks of the needles that had tapped every secretion his body had held.
Her eyes flooding with tears, Caroline turned away, a
nd a moment later Oberholzer led her back upstairs, where he guided her gently toward the elevator. “I think we should take a look at your apartment,” he said, his voice as gentle as his touch. “Whatever we find, it can’t be any worse than what we just saw.”
Her eyes as frightened as a rabbit’s, Caroline looked back toward the doorman’s desk. If the bodies of the children were still there, what had happened to Rodney’s? She had killed him—she knew she had! Killed him, and left him bleeding right there! But now—“It isn’t possible,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I know what happened—I know what I did—”
“Let’s just go upstairs and take a look around.” Oberholzer pulled open the door of the elevator’s cage, and Caroline let him steer her inside. Oberholzer closed the door, pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the car started to rise. As the doorman’s desk slid out of her view, Caroline finally looked at Oberholzer, her ashen cheeks stained with the tears that had overflowed as she gazed into the lifeless face of the boy in the basement. “They’re all gone, aren’t they?” she whispered. “Not just Rodney—all of them.”
“We’ll find them,” Oberholzer replied, his voice as hard as the look in his eyes. “We don’t let people disappear who do things like that.”
The elevator lurched to a stop at the fifth floor, and as Caroline gazed at the door to Anthony Fleming’s apartment she felt a strange sensation of disconnection taking place inside her. Not our apartment, she thought. His. The door to the apartment stood open; a uniformed policeman stood in the hall next to it. And the same stench of death that permeated the lobby and the basement now poured forth from the rooms into which she had taken not only herself, but her children as well.
“Like this when you got here?” Oberholzer asked, tipping his head toward the door.
The officer nodded. “Nothing’s locked—everything’s standing open. What I want to know is what we’re lookin’ for? Don’t look like anybody’s lived here in years.”