The Suicide House

by Charlie Donlea

  “They’re waiting upstairs. Bring your poison with. It’s showtime.”

  CHAPTER 9

  RORY MOORE SAT IN THE BACK OF THE COURTROOM. SHE HID BEHIND thick-rimmed glasses and made sure her beanie hat was low on her forehead. Despite the summer temperatures, she wore a lightweight gray jacket buttoned to her neck. This was her battle gear, the outfit she wore in a number of various forms to protect her from the world. Her right knee bounced nervously, and the vibration in her foot reminded her that she was without a critical aspect of her gear. The rubber sole of her high-top canvas gym shoe had felt wrong ever since she started wearing them. Rory had been without her combat boots for six months now, but she hoped to remedy that situation today.

  She sat in the last row while her eyes darted back and forth behind her glasses, taking everything in. The courtroom had filled steadily over the past thirty minutes. It wasn’t packed to the rafters, but there was a constant flow into the room. First the bailiffs had unlocked the heavy courtroom doors for the early spectators to scurry in and claim the best seats. Most went straight to the front rows. Rory opted for the back. Next came the beat reporters covering the story for the Tribune and the Sun-Times. Then came the families of both the victim and the man accused of killing her. Camille Byrd had been murdered more than two years ago, and her case had gone cold. Until, that is, Rory became involved. She reconstructed Camille’s life, following the girl’s footsteps up until the night her frozen body had been discovered in Grant Park. The reconstruction led to Camille’s killer. Rory turned her findings over to Ron Davidson—her boss and the head of the Homicide Division inside the Chicago Police Department—who, in turn, delivered those findings to his best detectives. They confirmed all the dots Rory had connected and made an arrest less than a week later.

  Since then, Rory had sat in on each of the court appearances, from the arrest and arraignment hearing to the grand jury. For a full week she hid in the back row during the trial, and she had spent an anxious weekend at home after closing arguments ended the previous Friday. Monday came and went, and now it was Tuesday morning and word was out that the jury was back and a verdict was in.

  After twenty minutes, the courtroom was as full as it was going to get. Sadly, two years after her death, there were fewer people curious about Camille Byrd’s murder than there had once been. Many who had originally been tasked with discovering what had happened to this beautiful young woman were now busy with other cases. And the public at large had been lured away by other topics and different headlines. But Rory would never forget Camille Byrd. Like all the cases Rory reconstructed, she had developed an intimate connection with the victim. There was something different, however, about Camille. Somehow, the dead girl had allowed Rory to solve one of the greatest mysteries of her own life. How, exactly, that revelation came from a girl long dead Rory would never fully understand. But the otherworldly guidance that Camille Byrd had offered put Rory firmly in her debt. As repayment, she promised to bring closure to Camille’s case. Her knee still tapped anxiously now that the courtroom was full because she hoped today would offer that closure.

  Finally, the lawyers arrived and took their spots at the tables in the front of the courtroom. On cue, the defendant appeared, shackled and in jumpsuit orange. After a few suspended moments of courtroom silence and angst, the twelve members of the jury shuffled into their seats. The judge was the last to materialize. He brought the court to order and explained that the jury had come to their conclusion. He offered a ten-minute monologue on how things would proceed and addressed both families during the process. When there was nothing more to add, he turned to the jury.

  “Mr. Foreman?” the judge said. “Have you come to a verdict?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” the foreman said.

  As he lifted the page to read their decision, Rory closed her eyes.

  “On the count of first-degree homicide in the death of Camille Byrd, we the jury find the defendant . . . guilty.”

  Murmurs and cries filled the courtroom. The accused’s mother openly wept and moaned. Camille Byrd’s parents huddled together and also cried. Rory stood and headed for the exit. There were other counts and other crimes and more verdicts to be announced, but Rory had heard all she needed. As the foreman continued to read from his card, Rory opened the door to the hallway. Before she slipped out of the courtroom she caught a glance from Walter Byrd, Camille’s father, whom Rory had gotten to know during her hunt for Camille’s killer. He nodded at her from the front row and mouthed Thank you. Rory nodded back and then disappeared through the doors.

  CHAPTER 10

  AN HOUR AFTER SHE LEFT THE COURTROOM, RORY MOORE WALKED into Romans shoe store on LaSalle. She strolled through the aisles until she found what she was looking for—Madden Girl Eloisee combat boots. They were tall and black, with laces that zigzagged up the front. The sight of them put a lump in her throat. She’d been wearing this style of boot for as long as she had existed on this planet. At least, as long as she could remember. She’d been without them, however, since her only pair had succumbed to an unfortunate incident involving a fireplace and lighter fluid. Rory had resisted the urge to immediately replace her boots after they burned to nothing. Instead, she decided to wait until after she’d provided closure to Camille Byrd’s parents. Now, she pulled a pair of size 7 off the shelf and slipped her feet into them. She instantly felt better. A metronomic ticking inside her brain quieted for the first time in months, her body relaxed, and the inner balance of her mind normalized.

  At the checkout counter, she handed the cashier the empty box.

  “I’m wearing them home.”

  The woman behind the counter smiled. “That’s not a problem,” she said, scanning the barcode. “Eighty-five seventy-two.”

  Rory worried about any proof of her purchase, no matter how threadbare it might be. Even scanning the barcode set her radar on high alert, but she knew certain footprints were unavoidable. Rory handed the girl five twenty-dollar bills. Cash assured that no record of the transaction could be traced back to her. Inquiring minds who knew the details of the last half of the previous year might ask the whereabouts of her previous boots, and she wanted no one looking for them. Those old Madden Girls were nothing but a pile of ash. Some people, however, might consider them evidence, including her boss inside the Chicago Police Department. Other people, like talented forensic folks, could take that pile of ash and pull from it traces of the past. Rory wanted to keep the past, and all its secrets, dead and buried. So she paid cash and hoped for the best.

  As she left, she dropped the canvas high-tops into the trash can. Wearing her new Madden Girls, she walked to her car with a moxie that she’d been without for the past six months.

  CHAPTER 11

  FROM THE STREET OUT FRONT, THE HOUSE LOOKED DARK AND EMPTY Inside, though, soft light seeped from the den and spilled across the cherrywood floorboards. Rory sat at her workbench in the dim room, the gooseneck lamp directed at the catalogue in front of her and her laptop emanating a blue glow. She was hard at work, and it had nothing to do with her job at the Chicago Police Department. Tonight was for research. Tonight was for tracing lineage. Tonight was for making sure her next purchase would be perfect. She sipped from a glass of Dark Lord stout as she worked.

  The walls of her den were lined with built-in shelves that housed twenty-four restored antique porcelain dolls, each standing in perfect order—three per shelf, eight shelves in all. Exactly twenty-four dolls. Anything less set Rory’s mind on a constant loop that obsessed over the vacancy. She had learned not to question this quirk, or the many other idiosyncrasies that defined her personality, but rather to embrace them. She enjoyed the company of the forty-eight unblinking eyes that stared down on her as she cross-referenced her research, moving between the catalogue filled with photos of antique dolls and various websites she had pulled up on her computer. She took copious notes in her journal until she finished her research, then picked up her glass of Dark Lord and took a long,
slow sip. She’d found what she was looking for, her inquiries had confirmed its authenticity, and the photos she downloaded proved her selection was in dire need of her expertise.

  Satisfied with her selection, she took a deep breath and pulled a folded piece of paper from her back pocket. She had printed the American Airlines boarding pass that morning in preparation for her flight the next day. Being trapped in a tube at thirty thousand feet with two hundred other passengers was nauseating. Just thinking about it brought a subtle layer of moisture to her forehead.

  She heard the front door open and keys jingle as they were removed from the lock.

  “Rory?”

  “In here,” she said, slipping the boarding pass back into her pocket.

  She didn’t bother to turn around. She sensed his presence in the doorway, then felt the vibration of his footsteps as he approached. Finally, she felt his lips on the side of her neck. She reached back and ran her fingers through his hair.

  “Guilty on all counts,” Lane Phillips said in her ear. “You said you weren’t sure.”

  “I was cautiously optimistic.”

  “Well done. Did you talk to Walter Byrd?”

  “Yeah,” Rory said, remembering the nod Camille Byrd’s father had given her on the way out of the courtroom. To Rory, it was a conversation.

  “Now what?”

  “Now I disappear for a couple of months,” she said.

  “How long until Ron shows up on the front porch?”

  Rory shrugged. “He’ll wait at least a couple of weeks. He knows to give me space.”

  Ron Davidson had a never-ending stack of homicide files he needed Rory’s help with. Cases that had stumped his best detectives. A forensic reconstructionist specializing in cold-case homicides, Rory’s expertise lay in her ability to piece together puzzles of crimes that had gone unsolved for years. Her brain worked differently than others, and her uncanny mind saw things others missed. No matter how hard she tried, she had never been able to explain how she noticed the missing pieces when she jumped into a cold case or walked into a crime scene from years before. She knew only that when presented with an unsolved mystery, something clicked inside her mind that prevented her from forgetting about it until she had the answers that had eluded everyone else. A parallel phenomenon occurred whenever she picked up an antique doll that was damaged and ruined. Her mind refused to settle itself until the doll was perfect.

  The Camille Byrd case had brought two restless months of Rory retracing the girl’s final days. She followed the footsteps of the girl’s ghost until they led her to answers. It was a taxing routine that left her drained. Ron Davidson knew his star investigator well and recognized Rory’s need for space after the conclusion of a case. Two weeks was the typical window he allowed; two months were what Rory usually took. The gaps were filled with Ron’s frantic phone calls, incessant texts, threats of ending her employment with the Chicago Police Department, and the inevitable hunt when Ron tracked Rory down, one way or another, to corner her with an ultimatum. Tonight, though, on the first day of her self-appointed sabbatical, none of that was present. It felt like the start of summer vacation when she was a kid.

  “Two weeks will go fast,” Lane said. “Then you’ll need a place to hide. Ron’s a detective, after all, and he knows where you live. It won’t be hard to find you.”

  Rory turned with a smile to stare at Lane. “Something tells me you have a hiding place.”

  “I do. I’ve been asked to take part in a podcast for NBC.”

  “A podcast about what?”

  “The Westmont Prep case from last year.”

  “When those kids were killed in Indiana?”

  “Yeah. The podcast is already underway, with a lot of buzz, huge advertisers, and a big name attached—Mack Carter. It’s being produced in Peppermill, Indiana. They need me for about a month, they’re guessing. Maybe longer, depending on what Mack turns up.”

  “They need you for what?”

  He took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  “There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense with the case, with the murders, with the teacher who was accused, and with the students who survived. There’s a big psychology angle they want me to take on.”

  He pulled her closer.

  “Come with me.”

  Rory raised her eyebrows. “Come with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To Indiana?”

  Lane nodded.

  Rory rolled her eyes. “And here I thought you were going to jet me off to the Caribbean.”

  “No, it’s not that glamorous. Come with me anyway,” he said.

  “To do research for you on some grisly case? I just finished a case.”

  Lane rested his forehead against hers. “I’ll do the research. You keep me company and hide from Ron for a few weeks. He’ll never find you in Peppermill.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “They set me up in a little cottage. They showed me pictures. It’s cute.”

  Rory cocked her head. “Who exactly am I talking to right now? You’ve never used the word cute in your life. And you rarely leave the city unless you’re on an airplane to New York.”

  “I’m trying to sway you into saying yes.”

  “Cute isn’t doing it.” Rory backed away and shook her head. “No, Lane. I’m not in the mood for that. You’d be working, and I’d be doing what exactly? Sightseeing in northeast Indiana? I want to be here. In my own house, close to my own stuff, and doing my own thing for a while. I need the downtime.”

  Lane nodded. “I thought I’d give it a try.”

  Her father’s death the year before had left only one man on this planet who understood her. To the extent that Rory Moore could be understood.

  “Sorry. I just . . .” Rory pointed at her workbench and the open catalogue of dolls glowing under the gooseneck lamp. “I need some time by myself. To unwind and get my mind straight.”

  Lane nodded again. “I get it.”

  Rory ran her hand over his cheek and kissed him. “I’m a pain in the ass, I know.”

  “I still love you. Even if you make me go to a cottage in Indiana by myself.”

  “I thought it was cute?”

  Lane smiled. “That was the wrong play.”

  “So very wrong,” Rory said. She turned around, closed the catalogue, and picked up her Dark Lord. “Wasn’t the Westmont Prep case solved? Open and shut, no? One of the teachers killed those boys.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got all night.”

  Lane pointed at Rory’s beer. “I’m going to need one of those.”

  CHAPTER 12

  RORY FLIPPED SWITCHES AS THEY WALKED, FIRST THE RECESSED LIGHTING of the hallway and then the overheads in the kitchen. They were all set to dimmers that thwarted their full wattage, and the house awoke in a groggy amber glow. A night owl since childhood—ever since she wandered out the back door of her great-aunt’s farmhouse when she was ten years old and made a grand discovery—Rory preferred the stalking shadows of a barely lit house to the infirmary fluorescence she witnessed spilling from the windows of the bungalows up and down her block. She opened the beer cellar, a glass-front cooler built into the wall next to the refrigerator. The top shelf held her supply of Dark Lord—twelve 22-ounce bottles of Russian-style imperial stout perfectly arranged in three straight, tight rows with labels forward. The only incongruence visible was the wax seal that dripped from the top of each bottle, the result of having been dipped at the brewery. Rory could live with this imperfection.

  She knew Lane could no more stomach a Dark Lord than she could handle the light beer he preferred. They were opposites in that regard. She grabbed a Corona Light from the bottom drawer, kept hidden because the sight of a clear glass bottle filled with light yellow beer insulted the harmony of her cellar.

  She popped the top and handed it to Lane.

  “So, Westmont Prep. What’s the draw?”

  Lane took a sip of beer. “
Two students were killed last summer at an abandoned house on campus. Three days after the murders, police had their man—a chemistry teacher named Charles Gorman. I’m going to take a look at the psychological aspect of the story. Dive into Gorman’s mind-set.”

  “You’ve gotten permission to interview him?”

  “I wish. He tried to kill himself a couple of days after the murders as police closed in on him. Jumped in front of a train that runs next to the old boarding house.”

  “Tried?”

  “Yeah, came pretty close from what I’ve been told. Brain-damaged himself to the point that he drools the days away in a secure psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. Hasn’t talked since he came out of his coma, and EEG shows nothing going on upstairs.”

  “Sounds like a guilty man wanting to escape his demons, and a prison sentence.”

  “Maybe, but I think there’s more to it than that. I’ll put together a profile of the killer and make sure Gorman matches that profile.”

  “What makes you think there’s more to the story?”

  “Because over the past year, three Westmont Prep students who survived that night have gone back to the boarding house to jump in front of the same train as Gorman.”

  Rory stopped her glass just before her lips.

  Lane raised his eyebrows. “Told you it was interesting.” He took a sip of beer. “Something was going on with those kids last year, and it’s carried over to today. Something they haven’t told anyone about. The story that’s out there now is too clean. Teacher snapped, teacher confessed in a handwritten letter, teacher tried to kill himself. I’m not buying it, and neither is Mack Carter. So together we’re going to look into it.” Lane paused a moment. “Sure you don’t want to come with me?”

  Rory offered a small laugh to buy some time. She thought of the earmarked catalogue in her den that displayed the hundreds of antique porcelain dolls she had researched. She remembered the feeling of balance that perusing the pages had brought to her mind, which had been running too hard for too long. She also remembered the boarding pass in her pocket for the flight that departed in roughly twelve hours.