Die Again

by Thompson, Bill

  He started on the ground floor with its three arched doorways. Two on the right were boarded up, and the third was the wooden gate that led into the corridor. The second-floor windows seemed higher than they should be, and that was because there was an entresol between the two floors. It was invisible from the front, but he knew it was there.

  The second floor was the living area. There were five tall doors, each with windowpanes and shutters. In front of them a wrought-iron balcony ran the length of the building. Above those windows was the gabled roof and three dormer windows that opened into the attic.

  Is there anything about the exterior I’m missing?

  He ticked off what was behind every window and door. Now that they’d breached the attic, he’d set foot in every room, and he named off the rooms one by one, window by window. Three doors on the first floor. Five tall window/doors on the second floor. Three dormer windows in the attic.

  Allowing his right brain to take charge, he wondered if anyone had ever fallen off the front balcony like they had in the back.

  Why were the three doorways on the first floor arched? Was it just for looks, or was there some other purpose to that feature?

  When Lucas LaPiere built the structure, did he plan to house slaves in the attic? If so, did the dormer windows open to allow a little air inside, or were they closed tight? They were so small that an adult couldn’t have escaped onto the roof through them, and if a child tried it, he would surely slide off the steeply pitched slates and fall three stories to his death.

  I wonder if that ever happened? Not that it matters to the issue at hand, but I wonder if a prisoner tried it out of desperation.

  Shane Young turned the corner, waved and met him at the gate. “Okay, Sherlock. Where do we begin?”

  They went straight to the attic, where Landry believed he had missed something. With no idea where to begin, he used the same tactic as when he was on the street. He stood at one end of the room and let his mind wander. He moved his eyes along the wall to a corner, turned and repeated the exercise until he was back at the beginning.

  Something niggled at his brain. He was overlooking an important clue, and he struggled to figure it out. Perhaps a different point of view was what he needed. He moved to the center of the room and faced each wall. Brick wall on one end. Longer brick wall with six beds and six restraints bolted to the wall. Two closet cells at the far end with a brick chimney between them. Street-side wall with two high dormer windows and six more beds and restraints.

  Dammit. There’s something I’m missing — something I can’t quite put my finger on.

  “Holy shit!” he yelled, and Detective Young put his hand on the butt of his service revolver. “Holy shit, I’ve got it!” He turned and ran down the stairs with the cop right behind him.

  Landry popped out into the sitting room and walked to its brick fireplace. Just to its right stood an open door, and he motioned to Young to come with him. “How about that?” he gloated. “Look at this room and tell me what you see.”

  “I see an oversized bathroom with a clawfoot tub and a sink, both with plumbing that shows they were added after the building was built. I see closets to one side —" He walked to an open door and peered inside. “There’s nothing left in them except piles of dusty rags on the floor.” Young knew that wasn’t what Landry was talking about, so he examined the floor, ceiling and walls. “There are no windows, and one wall is made of brick. That’s the back of the chimney, like we saw upstairs —"

  He paused and Landry said, “And there you have it!”

  As they went back into the sitting room, Young figured it out too. “I’ll be damned. I’m pissed that we didn’t catch it, but thank God you did. Let’s get back upstairs!”

  At the far end of the prison room, Detective Young took one side of the brick chimney and Landry the other. They were looking for an opening because another room lay behind the wall. The dormer windows were the first clue Landry missed — there were three windows visible from the street, but this room contained only two. The second clue was the fireplace in the sitting room below them. The brick wall above was the front of the fireplace. Downstairs, Landry and the cop had walked into a room behind the fireplace, proving that a similar room lay hidden behind the chimney in the attic.

  They ran their hands up and down along the wood panels that abutted the bricks but found nothing. Then Landry tried the seam itself, and at waist level he felt a tiny indentation in the wood. It was separated from the bricks by a quarter of an inch, just enough to insert his fingers. He poked and prodded, and then he pulled hard to the left. As the panel slid open, Young drew his weapon.

  They stepped through the opening into hell.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Tiny shafts of light poked through the single dormer window high above the gabled chamber. Upon their entry, the room came alive like an animal rudely awakened. Groans and sighs, chains being dragged across the floor, cries of the wounded and hurt came from every dark corner of the twelve-foot-square space. With pistol in hand, Detective Young tossed Landry a flashlight.

  By what lay strewn about this secret area, its purpose was apparent. The chains and shackles in the adjoining room were one thing, but this place had a more sinister purpose. There were six-inch iron spikes, large wooden mallets, a chair outfitted with rotting leather straps to bind arms and legs, branding irons, and heavy pliers that could have crushed a man's finger bones.

  They heard a muffled voice from somewhere close. "Help me! If someone's there, please help me!"

  "Jack!" Landry cried, shining his light about. There was no one else here, although the cries seemed to come from every corner.

  "Jack! Jack, can you hear me?"

  "Help!"

  "Back there!" Young pointed to the opposite wall. Like those in the other room, iron bars stood in a doorway. The padlocked gate hid another small room and a horrific, gruesome sight.

  Shriveled corpses lay in a pile as if tossed there like rubbish. Grinning skulls leered at them. Bony limbs with withered strips of flesh poked from disintegrating shirts, trousers and skirts. As if the appalling scene of death wasn't enough, something even more grisly rose amid the bodies. Jack stood on tiptoes on a three-legged stool. A hand raised high above his head was nailed to the wall by an iron spike through his palm. Blood trickled down his arm as he shifted his legs to ease the discomfort.

  "Help me," he gasped. "If I lose my balance, it'll rip my hand apart."

  While Landry tugged and pushed at the iron gate, Young called for reinforcements and equipment. "Stay calm, Jack," Landry urged. "Just a few more minutes. Who did this to you?"

  "I did." They whirled around to find Empyrion, but his deep voice belonged to Charles Richard.

  "Unlock the gate," the cop said, but Empyrion shook his head.

  "Lucas is a wicked man. He deserves what he's getting."

  Landry said, "That's not Lucas. He died a long time ago. Prosperine killed him. You know that, Charles."

  Jack screamed from behind the gate. "Every corpse in this room is Prosperine's work! She's the monster. This is her workshop, not mine!"

  Empyrion flew to the gate. "Stop the blasphemy, Lucas! She never loved you!"

  Footsteps came from the stairway as four people emerged into the attic. Two burly policemen attacked the gate with pry bars and a bolt cutter. In seconds the gate fell back, and two EMTs rushed into the room. The officers supported Jack's weight while the EMTs removed the spike and carried him to a gurney.

  Landry looked for Empyrion, but as usual he had vanished amid the confusion. Leaving Detective Young and the others with the grisly scene, he updated Cate and drove to the ER to be with Jack. The physician said Jack was fortunate the spike had been in his palm. Although intensely painful, it had penetrated flesh, not bone. There would be a scar, but he would heal with no long-term problems.

  Jack couldn't remember going into the building or entering the hidden room. The first memory was when Empyrion Richard had tied
his hands and feet, hoisted him up and held him there long enough to drive a spike through one palm. The man was tall and strong, and Jack said he manhandled him with ease.

  "He kept calling me Lucas. He blamed me for the dead bodies lying in the room."

  Landry asked if he remembered speaking to Empyrion just after they found him. "You said every corpse in the room was part of Prosperine's workshop. You called her a monster."

  "I don't remember doing that, but I faded in and out of reality while I hung there. I knew if I relaxed my feet and bent my knees, my hand would rip apart and I'd bleed to death."

  Landry brought Jack to his apartment. While Cate left to pick up lunch and the powerful medicine the doctor had called in, Landry settled Jack in bed. By the time she returned, he was in considerable pain. He took his first dose, sipped on the soup and was asleep in ten minutes.

  It shocked Cate to learn what had happened to him. She asked about the moans and groans Landry had heard. Since Jack was the only living person there, did Landry imagine them, or was it something else?

  "It's the trapped souls," he replied. "I'm convinced of it. We know Prosperine was a murderess, but if what Jack said to Empyrion is true, she was a monster. That room wasn't a place to keep slaves from escaping. It was a torture chamber, like one you'd see at the Tower of London. Whoever's workshop we were in was a maniac. To inflict that kind of pain on another human — it's beyond belief."

  "What's next?"

  He wasn't sure yet. There was plenty of backstory for a TV show, and a few things were coming together, but much of the enigma on Toulouse Street remained a mystery.

  Jack was awake off and on during the afternoon, and by evening he was hungry. As they ate pizza around the kitchen table, Jack said, "Before I have to take another pain pill, I want to say something. We have unfinished business. We never found out what I told Tiffany that made her scream. I want to know that and so do you, Landry. But the crucial thing is to prove I didn't kill Tiffany. We were working on that when Empyrion pushed us out the window. Dr. Little has to put me under one more time. If not, I'm headed to prison."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  It took only forty-eight hours to bring everyone together this time. The trustee had granted permission only after Shane Young promised him there would be police at the session. He assured the lawyer there would be no problems this time, although he had no real way to guarantee it.

  The plan was to take Jack two places only. Dr. Little would regress him ten days and learn what he'd told Tiffany during her own session that started her screams. That was the easy stop. The other was the night in 1837 when Prosperine LaPiere killed Caprice. If they could recreate that scene as Jack had seen it earlier, it would show Detective Young who killed Tiffany.

  Dr. Little took Jack back to Tiffany's hypnosis. He told Jack they were in this same courtyard.

  "Do you see Tiffany lying on the recliner?"

  He nodded. In slurring words, Jack recounted showing up drunk, seeing Tiffany and going to her side.

  "You're leaning in close," the psychologist said. "You're whispering in her ear. What are you saying to her?"

  "Uh, I'm saying..." He began, but then his voice changed. This was no drunk talking. The words were clear and cold. "Caprice, I am your master. Heed my words, child. You're going to die because of what you saw. Some day when you let your guard down, Madam will kill you!"

  Little paused and then took Jack to 1837. The hypnotist worked for thirty minutes trying to make something happen, but Jack's memory bank was blank. He tried segmenting the year into months and the months into weeks, but Jack remained still and silent throughout.

  At last Dr. Little stopped. He told Jack to rest and turned to Landry. "Here's why I think this isn't working. According to Jack's vision the night Tiffany died, he was playing the part of Lucas, but he was already dead. We know he died in 1832. That night Madam LaPiere saw him before killing Tiffany, who was playing Caprice. But she too said he was dead and buried beneath the stones. We're getting nothing because we took him to a time when Lucas has been dead for five years."

  Separating live persons from the dead ones they played was complicated, but Landry agreed with Dr. Little. He paced the courtyard for a few minutes and returned.

  "I don't know what we were thinking! How did we both miss the obvious?"

  "And that is..."

  "We must go to the night Tiffany died a little over a week ago and recreate the murder scene Jack witnessed."

  Over the next half hour, Dr. Little guided Jack through the events of that evening. He ate at Acme, went to an AA meeting and started home. Instead, something drew him to the building. As he spoke, his voice changed. He became Lucas, and the girl on the balcony was Caprice.

  Landry felt a tingle of excitement as the same shadowy mist swirled through the courtyard. He glanced back and saw Detective Young shooting phone video. Phil's camera was rolling too — everything was being recorded.

  Through his eyes, the group saw what Jack had witnessed. They saw Caprice and Prosperine fight as Lucas struggled to intervene. Caprice said something as Prosperine lifted her up. Just as she fell, she uttered more unintelligible words.

  Afterwards Prosperine spoke to Jack as her husband, Lucas, and they heard her say he was dead and buried under the stones by the fountain.

  "I held Tiffany," Jack cried in his trance. "She heaved and groaned and pushed, and all I could do was hold her head in my lap until she was still."

  Landry perked up. This was new. Mortally wounded, her last death throes were spasms? Was that part of the dying process or something else?

  Those watching shed tears too as Jack heaved with convulsive sobs while describing her last moments. Dr. Little guided him on — Jack simulated using his phone to call Landry, and he looked up from the recliner toward the hallway as he and Cate arrived in the trance.

  Landry whispered instructions to Dr. Little, who said to Jack, "I want you to think a moment about what Caprice said when Prosperine was about to throw her over the railing. Did you hear her words?"

  "No, I couldn't hear her."

  "And did you see Charles standing in the bedroom behind you and Prosperine?"

  "Yes. She said something in her language, and he backed away."

  The session was finished, and within five minutes Jack was awake. He sat up, asked for a bottle of water and said, "Was it a success this time?"

  “It couldn’t have gone better,” Landry replied. “Now I have to talk to Shane Young about what happens next."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  That afternoon Phil Vandegriff summoned Landry and Jack to the cutting room, where he was editing footage from Jack's session. "I've got something interesting for you," he said, flipping switches as he told them to watch a monitor.

  Through the mist, Prosperine LaPiere and Caprice were visible on the balcony. The older woman yelled, "It's your turn to die, Caprice!" and lifted the much smaller girl off her feet. Caprice screamed something unintelligible as Prosperine hauled her to the railing.

  "Those words! What were they?" Landry asked as Phil paused the video and smiled.

  "Here’s why you pay me the big bucks," he quipped as he reversed in slow motion until he came to the right frame. Keeping one finger on the pause button, he moved his other hand to a machine and clicked them at the same time.

  The video crawled one frame at a time while the other machine played the audio portion at the same slow speed. Caprice's mouth opened and sounds came out. They were pieces of words — syllables — and still unintelligible.

  "Can you play it faster?"

  "Who's running the show here, you or me?" Phil laughed. "I was just showing you how we're able to enhance words. Here it is again." He made adjustments on both machines, rewound to the proper place, and started the video.

  Caprice opened her mouth and screamed, "My baby!"

  Jack said, "When I ran to Tiffany's body in the courtyard, she was heaving in spasms. She was simulating the labor pain
s Caprice was having!"

  Landry agreed. "This is good," he said. "We haven’t searched for where Caprice was buried. But I'll bet when we find it, we find a baby too."

  Phil said, "I want you to hear one more thing. These are the words she said just as Prosperine threw her over." As Madam let her go, Caprice looked into her face and spat words.

  Jack frowned. "They're garbled. I can't understand them."

  Phil said he'd tried every enhancement in his arsenal. The sounds weren’t garbled. They were crystal clear but made no sense. Jack asked him to load the video to a flash drive so he could study the sounds.

  Back in their office, Landry said, "I’m figuring more things out. I have to flush out Empyrion, and I know exactly what kind of bait to use."

  While Jack worked on the sounds, Landry called the building's trustee. He told Shawn Leary about the secret room in the attic where Jack was held hostage in a cell filled with desiccated corpses. His hand was even nailed to the wall with a spike.

  “As trustee of the LaPiere building, Jack Blair’s going to sue you for millions. The attorneys are preparing papers now.” Jack looked up and smiled.

  The astounded lawyer admitted it sounded terrible, but it had nothing to do with the family or the estate. He reminded Landry that Madam LaPiere was the last of the clan, and she died in 1865.

  “What about Empyrion?”

  “You’re aware I cannot comment about him, but I will say he is not part of the family. Prosperine LaPiere was the last, and there’s no one left to sue.”

  Landry paused to see what would happen next.

  "What can I do to make things right?” the attorney asked.

  Those were the words Landry was hoping for.

  "I want the police to search under the patio flagstones for bodies. If we find them, they'll be exhumed, identified and reburied in a cemetery. If you allow that to happen, I think we can work this out satisfactorily for all parties."

  "Why are you so interested in the building? This has nothing to do with you."

  "It's about justice. Whether you admit it or not, the things your client did were beyond belief. Madam LaPiere ran a house of horrors inside the building, and Lucas may have been her willing accomplice. This went on for years, and the people they killed deserve justice. Get hold of Empyrion Richard. Let him know I’m going to blow his little secret right out of the water."