Sketched

by E. M. Townsend

  The front door of the mansion was wide open and a constant stream of uniformed officials maneuvered around the property, their self-important paths intertwining like inner city traffic.

  Piper’s frustration increased.

  “Is there any way you can get him for us?” Adam spoke to the officer, his smooth therapist voice in full swing in a bid to win them a ticket in. “Can you radio him at all?”

  “If I had a buck for every person who’s asked me to get in here today, I’d be able to retire. Just go home and turn on the television like everyone else.”

  The patience of the reporters behind Adam ran out. A woman with lips so glossy they looked like they were coated in varnish shoved her microphone over Adam’s shoulder, practically grazing his cheek in the process. His glare was epic.

  “Is it true they’re looking for bodies in there? How many bodies do they expect to find? Were any of the victim’s children?”

  Not to be bested, another woman with equally glossy lips and inappropriately high heels stepped on the other side of poor Adam. She leaned toward the officer, the camera over her shoulder like some kind of robotic parrot.

  “Is it true the killer sexually abused and tortured his victims before killing them?”

  Piper turned back to Adam and grabbed his hand. His face a twisted mass of annoyance, he willingly allowed himself to be pulled away from the hungry media flock.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he breathed.

  “Look.” Piper pointed to where a lean, middle aged man was walking down the front path of the house towards the gate. His long, horse like face barely registered emotion as two hazmat wearing officers flanked him, both talking at once. “That’s Chief Hill.” Piper looked to where the young officer was still fielding questions. Still holding Adam’s hand, she quickly ducked under the police tape across the open gate and onto the property.

  “You know, the doctor released you under the condition that you rest. I don’t think sneaking into crime scenes falls under that category,” Adam growled at her but followed nonetheless, looking back over his shoulder as more reporters descended on the officer guard like a zombie horde.

  Piper ignored him. The chief had seen her almost immediately and was walking toward the two of them. Adam couldn’t help but notice his scalp glistening pink beneath what seemed like the dictionary definition of a comb over. It even bobbed a bit as he walked.

  “Ms. Cooke.” The officers in the hazmat suits stood back, their clip boards at the ready. One of them was carrying what looked like a vial of dirty violet colored water in his gloved hands.

  Now closer, Adam could see plainly see how stressed the man was. Despite his obvious authority, it would be easy for even a non-professional to see the regret in his eyes. Hill took Piper’s hand and squeezed it. His was cold and clammy, his wedding ring denting her skin with the force of his grip. “Piper, forgive. me. He called me, you know that? Detective Harrison tried to convince me that you had a lead but I didn’t believe him.”

  Adam could see Piper twitching under the chief’s grip. He knew her well enough to understand that although Noah Hill might be looking for consolation, she had already put that behind her. She needed to get into that house and anything else was just a distraction.

  Still holding her hand, Hill looked into the girl’s eyes, blinking the moisture out of his own.

  “He was a good man. I know you were close.”

  “Have you found anything?” Piper said, she nodded to the house. The spring light exposed every moldy corner of the place, every decrepit indication of its eventual collapse. It was like the midnight monster exposed as a pile of old laundry in the light of day.

  The chief’s face buckled. Confused at his disregarded sympathy, he looked from Adam to Piper.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital? I mean, what you’ve been through. It’s enough to keep anyone out of commission for some time.”

  “I don’t have that luxury,” Piper said.

  “What she means is, she’s fine. A broken wrist and a few fractured ribs. They’ve let her go under the condition that she takes it easy,” Adam interjected, noting the officers behind starting to become restless.

  Hill looked back at the crowds of investigators and staff. He scanned the house where it towered over them like some kind of diseased beast.

  “Well in that case, you shouldn’t be here that’s for sure.”

  “Chief Hill,” Piper said, moving closer. “I know you’re sorry about Harrison. I’m sorry too. But now,” Piper paused, gathering herself, “maybe there’s a chance for redemption. Maybe it’s a chance for us to give Entler’s victims some closure. I’ve got to get in there, sir.”

  Hill looked confused again. He ran his hand over his mouth and sighed.

  “Piper, there’s nothing in there. That’s the thing. We’ve been going through the place for the last forty-eight hours and the only thing we’ve come up with is a lot of unreturned medical equipment and a fuck of a lot of foxgloves.”

  “The plant?” Adam said, confused, “Digitalis, you mean?”

  “Brynn Entler was a gardening nut, I knew that. But the only thing she had in those greenhouses of hers were foxglove plants and the means to turn it into this.” Noah turned back to his officers. He snapped his fingers and the officer carrying the jar of fluid jumped to attention. He hurried to the chief’s side and placed the jar in his hand.

  “Digitalis is apparently one hell of a toxin,” he said, holding up the violet colored water between them. “We found the same solution at the department store where we found you. There was a van parked in the loading dock, the van he used to transport the women, he had some of this shit in there too.”

  The officer beside him cleared his throat

  “It’s really not difficult, it’s like making a tea,” the officer interjected carefully. “The dried plant, when either injected or ingested, causes muscle paralysis, severe nausea and a kind of half sleep that can either kill or sedate depending on the dose.” The officer pointed at the jar. “There’s enough back there in the house to knock off half of Dixon.”

  “Or keep your son in a coma for five years,” Piper said. She met the chief’s stern gaze. “Chief, I probably know more about Kingston Entler at this point than you or your men ever will. If there’s something in that house, please let me help you find it.”

  A moment passed, the group still and contemplative among all the morbid bustle around them. The chief regarded Piper thoughtfully until he spoke.

  “I guess I owe you that much. I guess I owe Harrison that much too. Go on. Just, stay out of the way.”

  Piper smiled. Adam had forgotten how beautiful she was. Even Noah and his officers were taken aback. It was like watching a chrysalis crack. She seemed to stop herself from hugging the stooped, weary man in front of her and thanked him instead profusely. Noah Hill looked away, obviously uncomfortable.

  “Fine. I don’t think you’re going to find anything though. We’ve already gone through that hellhole top to bottom.”

  “I don’t think it’s top to bottom at all,” Piper said, setting off across the grass far too quickly for Adam’s liking. “I think it’s inside out you need to be looking for.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  They could smell the interior of the house before they even stepped inside. The warmth of the sun was magnifying the rotting vegetation scent that surrounded the property but even that wasn’t enough to dilute the fetid air leaking from the open door of the mansion.

  Adam made a sour face, pausing slightly before he stepped in.

  “This place could use a bit of an airing out.”

  It smelled stale, generations of the same air trapped in cupboards and sick rooms and basements, circulating in on itself and picking up the smell of rot as everything around it began to disintegrate. Although still packed with various officers in and out of uniforms, there was a deep loneliness to the smell that made the house feel empty.

  It was ma
ssive, standing in the entranceway and looking upward, the two of them had to crane their necks to see up the spiral staircase. There wasn’t an inch of the mansion that wasn’t decorated. Animal heads, paintings, dusty knick knacks, soulless oil paintings, it was as if the Entlers had an unnatural fear of blank space. Every nook of the home was another opportunity for them to showcase just how much money they had.

  Piper and Adam stepped out of the way of a group of forensics officers emerging from the basement beneath the stairs. Before they closed the door behind them, Piper caught a whiff of dirt from the cellar below. The officers looked disheartened, their hands empty and their heads shaking with confusion.

  “No,” Piper said to herself. “Not the basement.”

  “Oh, come on! How many rooms are in here? This place is gigantic.” Adam was peering down the many hallways that ran out from the center stairs like a hedge maze.

  Piper closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She did her best to remember her dream, the feeling of the cramped hallways as they closed in around her, the light shining in from the bedrooms.

  The bedroom.

  Her eyes flew open as an image of the room she had seen through the peek hole in her dream came back clear as if she’d just woken up. It had been a master bedroom she knew that much. Excessive in its luxury like the rest of the house, but distinctly feminine.

  “I know where we have to go.” Piper immediately moved toward the base of the stairs. Two plain clothes officers were descending, both huddled over an iPad in deep concentration. They barely noticed Piper who placed herself in front of them, her face a study of determination. They looked up, shocked at the pale girl blocking their path.

  “Excuse me, sorry, Brynn Entler’s room? Did you know where that was?”

  One of the officers blinked at her, she could see him accessing whatever complex map he had in his head of the mansion.

  “Fourth floor, right Keith?” His companion grunted his agreement. “Fourth floor, end of the hall. There’s nothing in there though, the chief declared it clear yesterday. You’re wasting your time.”

  Keith grunted again. “This whole place is nothing more than a fucking crow’s nest. Full of shiny garbage.”

  Obviously defeated, the officers stepped aside and joined the other sloped shouldered professionals trudging through the mansion. Piper turned back to Adam, gesturing with her head quietly for him to follow.

  Her ribs were complaining loudly by the time she reached the fourth-floor landing. She was doing her best not to show it, but she couldn’t help but wince when she took the final step. Her hand went to her side but she moved it quickly when she saw Adam, breathless in his own right, watching her.

  “Two days ago you were wrestling a mad man, remember?” he said, unimpressed.

  She shot him an annoyed look.

  “End of the hall, right?” she said, silencing his lecture before he could begin it. They made their way down the heavily carpeted corridor.

  Unlike the other floors, the fourth was indeed ‘clear’. Silent save for the murmuring of voices downstairs, it was the only part of the house not still being picked over and examined. All the doors of the rooms were open, like bodies on an autopsy table they had been cut up, examined and emptied of even the smallest of their mysteries.

  Brynn Entler’s room was just as exposed. Piper imagined that the door had never been this open for this long, never had this much light, or the windows thrown open as wide. It was exactly as she had seen it in her dream - only the layers of dust that covered every surface made it seem real.

  Piper held her breath, maneuvering past all the filigreed furniture and ottomans to the left-hand wall. She tried to find the right position, in her dream she had looked through a peephole that was perfectly placed in accordance to Brynn’s bed. He must have watched his own mother but from where? Adam watched her lightly rapping on the walls, running her hands along the textured wallpaper.

  “You think he was in the walls?” Adam said, once again trying unsuccessfully to control the tone of disbelief in his voice, “I just, it’s all a bit B movie, isn’t it?”

  The wallpaper had a peacock feather design, each plume melting into the next so as to create a dizzying, paisley effect. Piper was examining the center of every flocked feather, her head turning back and forth to find the view she had seen in her dream.

  “You’d be surprised,” she mumbled. She had reached the center of the room when she suddenly stepped backward as if she had been stung. Already pale from the last 48 hours, she suddenly seemed to grow bloodless.

  “What is it? Did you find something?”

  Piper shushed him. Her head cocked to the side like a dog, she walked nervously back to the wall and pressed her ear to it. When she looked at him, her eyes were far away with concentration.

  “Do you hear them?”

  Adam felt himself stiffen with nerves.

  “Do I hear who, Piper?”

  She closed her eyes. From behind the ugly paper and the ancient wood and plaster, a chorus of weeping had begun. Her heart began to beat in her ears as she slid across the wall.

  “There’s women,” she said quietly, “lots of women. And children. And a man.”

  “Piper, this is starting to make me uncomfortable.”

  She held up a finger to silence him again. Moving her head up and down the wall, she crouched and stood alternately. She followed the sobs, her eyes both unseeing and focused.

  Adam held his breath as she finally came to a halt. He watched as she gingerly passed her finger through an eye sized hole, carefully hidden in the center of the pattern.

  She looked at him, a bittersweet smile on her face.

  “Go get some of the officers downstairs, I think we’ve found them.”

  Adam was back within five minutes. Piper, her ear still pressed to the wall, wasn’t surprised to see Chief Hill with him. Her discovery was taken from her almost immediately. Hill ordered her aside while the other officers immediately set to dismantling the wall.

  She stood with Adam in the corner of Brynn’s room, watching the knickknacks and pictures tremble with every swing of the sledgehammers. Dust exploded from the wall, the thump of the hammers echoing downward through the floors beneath. The room was becoming crowded, excited voices filling the formerly silent floor as officer after officer gathered outside. At one point Hill demanded they return to what they were doing which a few did, but Piper could see the majority of them retreat to just outside his line of vision, still gaping at the jagged wound they were opening in the bedroom wall.

  As soon as the first panel was pulled down, the weeping behind the wall burst through at an alarming volume. Piper slapped her hands over her ears, the wails of inhuman in their misery. It was more like a chorus of wounded animals screeching for the release of death rather than for help.

  She closed her eyes against the onslaught.

  Adam’s warm hand was on hers again. She looked over at him, her eyes watering at the volume.

  “They’ve gone in,” he whispered, nodding at the hole. Piper watched as the first officer’s back melted into the darkness between the walls. Hill stepped in next, looking back at Piper briefly before he did. He said nothing but disappeared into the dark like the officers before him.

  She moved to follow but Adam stopped her.

  “Look, whatever is in there, I really don’t think you need to see it. I can give you my professional opinion that I’m pretty damn sure you’ve had enough for a while. You’re covering your ears Piper. It’s completely quiet in here.”

  “I have to, Adam.” Piper reluctantly removed her hands. They were still weeping. “I have to see. You need to understand that.”

  “Fine, but not without me, not again.”

  When Piper stepped through the portal the sledgehammers had created, she knew immediately where the stale smell had come from. It assaulted her senses even more aggressively than the weeping, a sour, sickly smell with an undertone of decay that made h
er flight or fight response sing up and down her frayed nerves.

  She felt her feet sinking into what she knew immediately was not leaves, or carpet or anything that benign. She fought the urge to leap back out when the sharp corners scratched against her ankles. There was a rustling as Adam sunk in behind her.

  “What is that?” he breathed. He leaned down and picked up a handful of the candy wrappers that ran the entire length of the hallway. “Christ, there’s so much of it. What are these? Candy?” He turned to the light that came in through the hole and held up the wrappers one by one. “I haven’t seen some of these since I was a kid. How old are these things?”

  The sound of one of the officers gagging echoed through the hallway. Even with the weeping chorus a constant background, she could hear the sound of their voices skirting the edge of fear up ahead.