by Jack Heath
The tracks continue past two more windows without any signs that he slowed down. They stop at the last window along. This was his final destination.
There’s a dim light inside, and the curtains haven’t been closed all the way. I peer through the gap. There’s a blanket draped across an antique reading lamp inside, casting a muted glow across a pile of clothes and part of a bookshelf. Zara is on the bed in a satin nightdress, eyes closed, hair fanned across the pillow, mouth slightly open. An open book has fallen onto her chest.
Around my feet, the tracks fade in the falling snow.
CHAPTER 19
Say a few kind words before you cook me, spread me and bite me. What am I?
‘How’d you sleep, Lux?’
‘Yeah. Good. Fine.’
Donnie takes a swig of milk straight from the jug. ‘That bad, huh?’
I laugh nervously. ‘Right. I guess I’m still getting used to the bed. You?’
‘Couldn’t sleep. Almost got up and went out back.’ He tilts his head in the direction of the slaughterhouse.
I swallow. ‘You do that?’
‘Sometimes. But Fred wants to wait until the new cameras arrive.’
I don’t know why it shocks me that Donnie works out his frustrations on the prisoners. I already know that it’s not about the money for these guys. I remember what Fred said about Samson: He was proud of what we’re accomplishing here.
I sprinkle some salt into my coffee. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how much do you get paid?’
Donnie looks confused by the question. ‘For what?’
‘For, you know, the work you do here.’
Donnie puts the milk back in the fridge. ‘I get to live in these beautiful surroundings with great people and make a real difference in the world.’
So, nothing. I wonder if the others all work for free. I sip the salted coffee. Usually I use a drinking straw, like a vein pumping into my mouth, but I couldn’t find any in this kitchen.
Kyle enters, bleary-eyed. He doesn’t look rested. I wonder if he sleepwalks, like me.
‘Morning,’ I say.
He just grunts and grabs a Red Bull from the fridge.
I wince. ‘There’s a lot of sugar in those.’
‘Yeah, no shit.’ He jams some bread into the toaster. ‘Where’s Zara?’
‘Out collecting yeast with Cedric,’ Donnie says. ‘Fred’s in the editing room.’
‘Do the subscribers know about the sabotaged cameras?’ I ask.
‘No,’ Donnie says. ‘They think it’s a planned outage. But we can only sustain that for a day or two. Rumours are already circulating. Subscribers are saying we’ve all been arrested. That’s why Fred’s in there. Gotta cobble together some old footage to make content that seems new.’
‘Making a difference in the world,’ I say, deadpan.
‘Right.’
Kyle’s toast pops up, startling me. He opens the fridge and grimaces. ‘We’re out of eggs.’
‘You’re doing a supply run this morning, right?’ Donnie asks. ‘Can I come?’
Kyle shrugs.
Donnie seems to take this as a yes. ‘Great. Lux?’
‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I got a hole to dig.’
Sadness sweeps across Donnie’s face, and I find myself wishing I’d been less blunt. ‘Right. Okay. See you.’
Fred emerges not long after, stretching a crick out of his neck.
‘How’d the editing go?’ I ask.
‘Ugh. It’ll get the job done, but it’s like a stew made of offcuts.’ He says this with both familiarity and disgust. I wonder how long he’s been a vegetarian.
‘Will the new cameras be here on Friday?’
‘Yes. Zara got the order in on time.’ He checks his watch. ‘I’m going to change the buckets in the slaughterhouse.’
He disappears out the back door. I put down my coffee, half-drunk. Time for some snooping around. Fred told me not to go upstairs. While he’s gone, I want to see what he’s storing up there.
I reach the staircase and put my hand on the bannister—then I hear a soft scuffle above.
I freeze. Donnie and Kyle have left, and Fred’s in the slaughterhouse, so it must be Zara or Cedric up there. I didn’t hear them go up, which probably means they didn’t want to be heard. I’m not the only one snooping.
I heard a creaking sound on Monday night, when I was sneaking around with a toothbrush. Could one of the Guards have been searching the attic then, too?
I want to know who it is, but I can’t go up there without them spotting me. I’ll have to stay close by and see who comes down.
I search Fred’s bedroom while I wait. I expect it to be monastic, given his Zen attitude, but it’s not. There’s a beanbag in the corner and a PlayStation next to a curved screen on his desk. When I wiggle the mouse, the screen lights up. It’s locked, but the background image is of a toddler with a gap-toothed grin. A young woman is pushing him on a swing, her face just out of frame. It looks like the photo was taken from a distance.
Under the desk there’s a paper shredder. I open it up. Unfortunately, it’s a cross-cut mechanism, not strip-cut. The container is full of little diamonds, rather than long strips I could have pieced together.
In the drawers I find some softcore porn and a few sticks of jerky. A guilty pleasure.
I take one. He won’t notice, or if he does, he won’t complain in front of all the vegetarians. As I unwrap it and stuff it into my mouth, I spot the most important thing in the room—a little wooden bowl on his bookshelf, filled with keys.
I recognise two of them from the front door and the slaughterhouse. There’s also a car key, presumably for the van. Donnie and Kyle have taken the pick-up, and apparently Fred’s key for it. The rest look like they might be for the padlocks on all the windows.
I chew the jerky thoughtfully. I can’t take any of them right now, but it’s useful to know where they are. I slip back out into the corridor. Listen for a moment. No one is coming down the stairs yet, so I head for Samson’s bedroom.
I’ve been here before, but this time I’m looking at it differently. A trained investigator learns to search for evidence that contradicts their theory rather than confirming it. When I saw Samson’s body, bullet hole in head, gun in hand, an impression formed immediately—suicide. So I started looking for signs of murder instead, and I found them. The look on his face, the lack of burns around the entry point, the absence of an exit wound despite the calibre of the gun.
This time, my theory is murder. So I start looking for signs of a suicide. The null hypothesis.
Samson was tidy, making the room easy to search. First, I look for a note. Nothing on his shelves, in his dresser, or fallen under his bed. I do find a key, though. Looks like it would fit the front and back door. I swipe it.
Most suicides don’t leave a note. Many of them think they have no one to write to. I came to this house planning to kill myself, and I didn’t leave anything for anybody. Still, it changes the probabilities.
Maybe he left a note on his phone or his computer. I scour the room.
Both are missing. Now that’s interesting. Could the murderer have taken them? I think I remember seeing a phone on the bedside table last time I was here, but maybe I’m wrong. I haven’t slept properly in two days. Haven’t eaten properly in a week.
I’ve always been crazy, but I can usually tell where my imagined world ends and reality begins. Now even that certainty is slipping out of reach.
I start searching for signs that Samson was mentally ill. Most depressed people don’t kill themselves, but most people who kill themselves are depressed. Samson has workout gear in his closet, well-worn. A reusable water bottle on his bedside table. The room is generally clean—no crumbs or wrappers or crumpled beer cans. No dust on the ukulele, either. It got a lot of use. All the signs point to Samson having a healthy lifestyle, which usually indicates a healthy mind.
In the dresser I find condoms and lubricant. Again, no dus
t, and the expiry dates are way into the future. Sexually active people are much less likely to be depressed.
Zara has been flirting with me, but I’ve seen signs that she and Fred are together. Kyle also seems interested in her. If she was sleeping with Samson as well, she’s quite the queen bee. But Samson wasn’t necessarily straight. He could have been in a relationship with anyone in this house.
Time to search Zara’s room. I slip back out into the corridor, listen at her door for a second, and turn the handle. It’s not locked. The door opens without a squeak. I’m reminded again of Zara’s footsteps, silent despite the high heels. For someone so eye-catching, she goes out of her way not to be heard.
I only saw a little of Zara’s room through the curtains last night—the same part the hiker must have seen, assuming it was him who left those tracks. The rest of it is a junk heap, with clothes piled high on the bed and books on every other flat surface. There’s a dressing table, strewn with lotions and concealers and a long pair of tweezers. She’s spilled some kind of make-up powder on the floor. Her window is padlocked, like every other one in the house—but unlike the others, there’s grey dust all around the padlock. She hasn’t cleaned the room in months.
If Samson’s computer or phone is in here, it could take me days to find it. And Zara could be back any minute.
A faint scent stops me. It’s fruity and feminine, although that’s an illusion. Women don’t smell like fruit. They smell just like men—sweat and bad breath and farts—until they are doused with chemicals that create the illusion of a fruity odour. Men are instructed to use a different set of chemicals that smell of pepper, smoke or whatever sandalwood is.
This particular scent stops me because it’s familiar: Reese Thistle’s shampoo. The memory is so strong that I turn around, expecting her to be right behind me.
She’s not. Just an empty doorway in a house of killers, where I live now, instead of with her. She’s gone forever, because of my mistakes.
I shake off the despair and try to focus. If I walk into Zara’s room, she might notice my footsteps in the spilled make-up. She could have spilled it deliberately for this reason. It looks like an accident, but is it?
I go to Donnie’s bedroom. Despite my theory that there’s no such thing as a feminine scent, the air in here is undoubtedly masculine—I can practically taste the testosterone. A couple of thirty-pound dumbbells compress the carpet in one corner, and some magazines about men’s health are on the dresser. Under the futon is a pair of running shoes.
I take off my own shoes and pull on Donnie’s. A good fit. Small feet for a big guy. Then I go back into Zara’s bedroom, leaving Donnie’s footprints all over the make-up. The more I can make the Guards suspicious of each other, the less suspicious they’ll be of me.
Zara’s books have no theme. There’s military history, fantasy, biographies of politicians, cookbooks. It looks like she visited a second-hand bookstore with a shopping cart and a blindfold. I open a few books and find receipts tucked into them—painkillers, moisturiser, rump steak. Either the receipt is someone else’s, or Zara has only recently converted to vegetarianism.
I get a flash of a big ceremony, Cedric officiating. Have you accepted cheese and rice as your lord and savoury?
Even reading the words rump steak makes me drool. The jerky is already gone, and it didn’t taste real. Too dry, not enough fat. Like eating a belt with a sprinkle of brown sugar.
The backs of the receipts have jumbles of letters and numbers on them, like Zara was trying to solve puzzles. I used to solve riddles for a living, but these are meaningless to me.
When I dig through the clothes on her bed, I find a laptop and a phone wrapped in some leggings and a dress. When I wake up the phone, the background picture is of Donnie, flexing in front of a mirror.
Did Zara steal Donnie’s phone? Why? And what will she think when she sees his footprints all over the floor?
I don’t know the passcode for the phone, so I open the laptop instead. This time the background is just a beach scene. The username is User73890. No clues there, and no idea what the password might be.
I could take both devices, but I have no realistic way of hacking in and every chance of getting caught. I put the laptop and the phone back where I found them.
At the other end of the house, the front door clicks and beeps.
I race back into Donnie’s room as quietly as I can. I kick off his shoes and pull on my own.
Footsteps approach from the direction of the living area. I stuff Donnie’s shoes back under the bed, scramble out and close the door.
Looking back, I realise that I left Zara’s door open. Too late to close it now—whoever’s coming is almost here. Instead, I stand in the doorway of my own room, facing the corridor, as if I’m just coming out.
Cedric appears. His eyes are red-rimmed. From opium or tears? I can’t tell. But at least I know it’s Zara upstairs.
‘Hey,’ I say.
Cedric jumps. ‘Lux! You startled me.’
‘Sorry, man. Heard you were out collecting yeast with Zara?’
‘I was. I came back early to, uh, work on something for the funeral.’
‘Right.’ He doesn’t seem to know that Zara came back early, too.
‘Would you be willing to read …’ Cedric seems to change his mind about whatever he was going to say. ‘Actually, you want to do some gardening with me?’
‘Sure.’
I follow Cedric out to the greenhouse. It isn’t very green. Just grubby white glass surrounding glazed brown pots filled with wet dirt. It’s winter, I guess. Everything has pretended to die, waiting for the atmosphere to be kinder before they give up their fruit.
But there is fruit, at least according to the labels sticking out of the soil: strawberries, watermelon, grapes, peaches and lemons, along with herbs and vegetables. There’s a small apple tree in the corner. I had assumed this place was just Cedric’s opium den, but it looks like he’s feeding the whole house.
He could poison us all if he wanted to. Apple seeds contain amygdalin, which releases cyanide when digested.
Fred’s theory was that the traitor wanted to kill all the Guards and take over the business. If he’s right, Cedric isn’t the killer. Cedric wouldn’t need to stage a suicide—just sprinkle some ground-up seeds into the cooking pot.
‘Do the prisoners eat this stuff, too?’ I ask.
‘No. They get dog food. Soy-based,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘We don’t want to condone cruelty to animals. Did you know a dairy cow can live for twenty years, but they turn them into dog food after six, when the milk starts to dry up?’
‘I did not,’ I say. ‘So what are we doing out here?’
‘Oh, if you could just water those two rows, that’d be great. Especially the eggplant. He needs a lot of care.’ Cedric smiles, as though this is funny. ‘Watering can’s over there. Use the worm tea.’
‘Worm tea?’
He shows me the worm farm—a big black tub, where earthworms are devouring kitchen scraps. He twists a faucet near the bottom of the tub, and urine-like fluid trickles out.
When the worm tea runs out, I fill the rest of the bucket with rainwater from another tank and start tipping it on the plants. Cedric is doing something with the poppies on the other side of the greenhouse.
I’m hungry, and I don’t really have time for this. Tonight I’m supposed to help abduct the new prisoner, who will expose me as an impostor. But maybe I can get some clues from Cedric about the hiker, or who killed Samson.
Almost every case I’ve ever worked has had a drug angle. ‘How do you make the opium?’ I ask.
He doesn’t turn around, so I can’t see the expression on his face, but his arms stop moving and his shoulders tense up. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You make dope, right?’ I say. ‘I was just wondering how you do it.’
He looks back at me, like he’s trying to read my mind. I find myself thinking neutral thoughts, as though he might really be psychic.
I cringe. ‘Is it a secret? Shit, I’m sorry. I haven’t told anyone.’
He stares at me for a long time and then says, ‘What the hell—I’ll show you. Come over here.’
I put down the watering can and go over to his little field of poppies. They are bigger than they looked at first, the vivid papery flowers almost two inches across, wobbling on foot-long stems.
‘You can make lots of things from poppies,’ Cedric says. ‘Codeine, morphine, heroin. But opium is easiest. Look. This one’s ripe.’
He plucks one of the poppies and starts scraping the head with the blade of his gardening shears. The scoured head starts to bleed. ‘I’ll leave this one overnight so the sap leaks out,’ he says as he works. ‘After that I’ll dry it in the oven on a low heat. Hey presto: opium powder.’
‘How did you learn to do this?’
‘I read about it in a book, then it was trial and error, basically. I don’t know even how most people get drugs. You remember all those lessons in school? Just say no?’
I nod. ‘This is your brain, this is your brain on drugs …’
‘Ah, you got that one. All kids are told to avoid drugs, but the messaging is subtly different. White kids are told drugs will fuck up their brains. Black kids are told drugs will land them in prison.’ Cedric inspects a flower. ‘Anyway, the commercials told us to just say no. They made it sound like everyone was doing drugs except me. I was desperate to say yes, only I didn’t have anyone to say yes to. So I tried this instead. You can buy poppy seeds from anywhere. You don’t need to know anybody, like a dealer. You don’t need …’
He catches himself, but I hear the rest of the sentence anyway. You don’t need to have friends.
‘I can’t produce much from a crop this small.’ Cedric gives me a sharp look. ‘You can try some if you want, but I don’t have enough for a second regular user.’
‘Is that why you haven’t told the others?’ I wonder if any of them have already figured it out. Zara didn’t look surprised when Cedric slept through the doorbell yesterday.